Sunday, November 30, 2008

The gathering of Senegalese Muslims resembled a west African version of US-style summer camp: dozens of young men and women huddled under tents singing songs to the four-time rhythm of cow-hide drums against an Elysian backdrop of flowering baobab trees.

Answering the call of the "Ndiguel" - the call to work - has become an important fixture for Mourides, a Sufi Islam movement whose doctrine of hard work as a route to paradise has made it a powerful economic and political force in Senegal.

Each year at harvest, thousands of disciples, from bankers to bus drivers, descend upon Khelcom fields, rising at 6am to pick peanuts under a blazing sun. The work is done on behalf of a local marabout - or religious leader - and the proceeds go to support local schools for poor youth.

"I come back here every year to learn humility, to reconnect myself with people in the countryside regardless of their background; it's about solidarity," says Idrissa Lo, a 33-year-old football agent from Dakar.

"Pray as if you will die tomorrow and work as if you will live forever," is one of the oft-quoted teachings of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, the Muslim mystic who founded Mouridism in 1883 and whose grainy photograph is plastered on walls across the country.

The marabouts' teachings to go out into the world and bring back wealth to build up the movement has led it to establish a formidable trading network across the globe, from street hawkers in Rome, tomato pickers in Spain and import/export dealers in Hong Kong.

Nothing is more illustrative of the marabouts' expanding influence than the extraordinary growth of the holy Mouride city of Touba, a chaotic urban expanse that rises suddenly out of the Sahelian bush.

With 5,000 inhabitants, Touba was just a village at independence from France in 1960. Today, with a population of more than 500,000, it is at the centre of a global network of street traders, merchants and labourers, whose remittances helped build the biggest mosque in sub-Saharan Africa and a $10m hospital nearby.

Such tangible benefits have been a big factor in the Mourides' recruitment success. It is also a factor in the fierce loyalty of their followers. Despite Senegal's impressive growth rate, those subsisting in the city slums have felt little improvement. While secular loyalty toward politicians has plummeted, Sufi marabouts have filled the gap, mitigating the worst effects of state neglect through the provision of schools and social services as well as preaching peace when political tensions run high.

Traditionally, Senegal's marabouts have acted as a force for inter-religious integration with Christian and animist minorities. The country's much revered first president and poet, Leopold Senghor, was Christian and it is not uncommon to have Muslims and Christians within the same family.

More recently, the marabouts' steady accumulation of political influence has attracted controversy, pitting traditionalists who wish to protect what they see as their religious integrity against ambitious politicians eager for votes.
Although ostensibly aloof from politics, in practise Senegal's four main brotherhoods have always vied for electoral influence, but political leaders were careful to avoid taking sides. Since the election of President Abdoulaye Wade in 2000, there is a perception that this has begun to change.

Upon being elected Mr Wade, himself a Mouride, went on a pilgrimage to Touba and publicly knelt before the Mouride caliph (leader). The president said his visit was purely personal but the message was clear: alliances were shifting and secular state politics were a thing of the past. Since then, Mr Wade has openly cultivated the endorsement of the caliph, who appeared on national TV during the 2007 presidential campaign to assert that Mr Wade, if elected, would complete the modernisation of Touba's infrastructure.

When combined with the personalisation of power around Mr Wade, some analysts allege that the caliph's closeness to the presidency casts him as a type of political consultant to the state.
"In a society where there are no clear boundaries between the religious and civic spheres . . . the ties that bind the nation together are becoming ever looser," says Penda Mbow, professor of history at Cheikh Anta Diop university in Dakar and a former minister of culture.

Occasionally, the lines between politics and religion have blurred, with worrying consequences for Senegal's democracy and its guardians. In the run-up to last year's presidential election, followers of one Dakar-based marabout, mostly jobless young men, attacked the convoy of Idrissa Seck, a presidential rival and former prime minister.

Although many Senegalese dismiss suggestions that marabouts are colluding with politicians, a creeping "politicisation" of the brotherhoods is acknowledged by Cheikh Bethio Thioune, one of the country's most respected Sufi leaders.

But supporters say Mr Wade has merely recognised the growing commercial power of the diaspora and the changing aspirations of the young.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Superficiality pervades Islamic discourse in our country. Instead of studying Quran and trying to elicit from it solutions for the real problems we face (in which case it would have plenty to say), we worry about certain cultural expressions and how it can harm our faith despite the egalitarian and pluralistic nature of Quranic thought.

The latest fatwa from the National Fatwa council is one which shows a lack of sensitivity and a lack of information.The lack of sensitivity comes from how they talk about yoga and Hinduism as being such horrible things to do and be. While the notion of polytheism is aberrant in Islam, many Hindus in my experience actually use their theology simply as representation and at the end of the day, believe in Atman, the great soul whom they identify as God.

And even if they didn’t, do we have the right to speak about them in such a derogatory manner? Could the fatwa council not have included a statement saying that this fatwa is simply an opinion and is not meant to be a derogation to hindus? What arrogance prevents them from saying so? The lack of information is evident in their wording that yoga contains ‘physical elements, worshipping and chanting’. Physical elements we know but what is this ‘worshipping’ and ‘chanting’? Are they talking about the asanas, the physical postures in yoga? There are postures which resemble the Islamic prostration, are those haram as well? What of the headstand posture, how is that an act of worhip?

And what of the chants or mantras? Why are those a problem? The mantra ‘aum mani padme hum’ has a deep etymological significance. Each syllable is meant to purify our being from bad things such as pride, jealousy, avarice, passion, ignorance and aggression. Isn’t this a good thing, purification?

Quran says in chapter 91, verse 9 that the soul which is successful is one which purifies itself.

Each syllable in ‘aum mani padme hum’ also signifies qualities of God such as wisdom, compassion, quality of being and equanimity. What is so unislamic about these qualities? If we looked through Quran, we will find that these qualities are repeated in Quran itself. This is why Quran calls itself ‘muhayminan alaihi’, that is a guardian over it, it being all ideologies before it. It was never meant to be the sole of source of truth but rather its criteria.The only difference between the Islamic and Yoga expressions are the cultures from which they originate.

The national fatwa council has taken upon itself to equivocate Arabic expressions of piety and worship with Islam itself. What if Mohamed was born in India? Would God have not commanded him to appropriate existing rituals albeit without the physical representations of God? Muslims may be praying in Sanskrit today if that was the case.

I wonder how the national fatwa council would see things then. And what about the sufi practises? Where does the council think they came from? The sufi dancing rituals for example were not Arab-originated yet they are seen to be more glamorous face of Sufism and and again there is nothing wrong with that.

We live in a pluralistic world alongside people of different cultural origins and expressions. If we expect them to understand us, then we must first seek to understand them and not to judge them in such a narrow and culturally chauvinistic way.

Islam is wider that the National Fatwa Council makes it out to be. If we read Quran, we will find it to be extremely unworried about how one expresses one’s devotion to God. Rather, it concerns itself with our ethics and how we treat others. Muslims need to realign themselves to this mindset.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Even in its eighth year, the annual sufi and mystic music festival, Ruhaniyat, is as soulful and impressive as ever. The festival, which has brought an impressive line-up of over 2000 Sufi musicians to the city over the last seven years, is all set to enthrall the city once again.

Organised by Banyan Tree Events — who also host the Banganga music festival every year —the two day festival began on Friday at Horniman Circle. The festival, which aims at showcasing the larger genre of Mystic music, brings together motley of mystic musicians — from Shabad singers to Baul music from West Bengal.

The festival will be held in seven cities this year — Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune. The highlight in Mumbai will be Sheikh Yasin Al Tohamy and his group from Egypt who will be performing Arabic Sufi songs and Latif Bolat from Turkey who will be singing Bektashi Sufiana songs.

Also performing in Mumbai will be Baithi Dhamaal and Malunga songs by the Siddhi-Goma Group from Africa; Sufi Kalam and mystic songs by Sawan Khan, Akhe Khan and Sali Muhammad from Rajasthan; Baul songs by Parvathy Baul from West Bengal, Mystic Shabads by Dev Dildaar from Punjab; and Sufi Qawaali by the Warasi Brothers and Group from Hyderabad.

Nazeer Warasi of the Warasi Brothers has been witness to the festival growing to its current popular status. “We performed in the very first Ruhaniyat. We are very happy with the platform it provides for Sufi music; it is one of a kind and we wanted to take it forward,” he said, adding, “We’re very happy to see how much it has grown.”

Anand Lalwani, Senior Manager of Public Relations at Banyan Tree Events, said, “The audience for this festival has grown since we first started. And we’ve also had more international artists over the years. Last year, the highlight was a group of Turkish dervishes and this year’s highlight, Latif Bolat, had performed in the previous festival as well. The Egyptian group, which is our other highlight, is performing here for the first time.” He added, “For the next year, we’re trying to get a Syrian group.”

For the artists, the name of the festival — Ruhaniyat — says it all. “‘Ruh’ has to do with healing the soul,” said Warasi, “and we are the doctors of that. If more people come and listen to this music, they’ll get peace of mind.”

Lahore: The Mystic Night at the World Performing Arts Festival “mystified” the audience as they celebrated the tunes of the legendary Sufi poets at the Alhamra Open Air Theatre.

Featuring such legendary figures as Iqbal Bahoo and Sain Zahoor, the star attraction proved to be Abida Parveen, whose charisma captivated the audience from her first to her last song.

The first open air concert to be completely sold out, the night attracted the largest crowd of the festival this year, as people braved the chilly weather to enjoy the warmth of the mystic performances.

Dressed in black with ajrak on her shoulders, Abida was welcomed on stage by thunderous applause from the waiting crowd. Starting with Haiderium Qalandarum Mastum, the singer engaged the audience with her voice immediately. She continued the momentum with her renditions of several ghazals and other mystic kalam. People swayed with the rhythm of her performance and many gave her a standing ovation to show their appreciation for her music.

Requests
The show organisers had taken the varying tastes of their performers into consideration and the stage lighting was changed between each performance to suit the theme of what was being sung. During Abida’s performance, people were encouraged to shout out requests.

Abida did not disappoint, as she took the sur on high notes and then skillfully brought them to the low notes. When she was singing in low notes, a pin-drop silence prevailed and her talent captivated the audience.

The vast majority of the people watching the performance were youths but there were several elderly and middle-aged people present as well. The elderly had brought cushions with them to enjoy the night properly as the stone stairs that served as the seating were very hard and cold.

Show-stopperEarlier, the organisers had announced that Abida’s performance would be followed by another singer but most of the crowd dispersed after she left the stage and there was no finale.

Omer Khan, a viewer, said that the enthusiasm of the Mystic Night had relieved him of his worries and tensions. He said that the city had rare moments of such scaled cultural activity, adding that such events could really promote the soft image of the country.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

By Peter Steinfels, "Reviving a Novel-Worthy Tale of War and Religion" - The New York Times - New York, NY
Friday, November 21, 2008

For more than 40 years he was a world figure, his renown stretching from the American Midwest to Moscow to the Middle East. As he neared death in 1883, The New York Times wrote that he “deserves to be ranked among the foremost of the few great men of the century.”

Earlier, he had received accolades and awards from France, Britain, Russia, the Ottoman sultan, the papacy and President Abraham Lincoln, who sent him not a medal but, in quintessentially American fashion, a matched pair of fancy Colt pistols.

The man being honored was Abd el-Kader, a learned and fervent Muslim, who for 15 years had organized and led a jihad against a Western power.

After he ceased hostilities, his four-year detention, in violation of a promise of safe passage into exile, became an international cause célèbre. Released and feted, even by his captors, he came to live in Damascus. There, in July 1860, el-Kader braved mobs and saved thousands of Christians from a murderous rampage through the city’s Christian quarter.

In this, the bicentennial of his birth, el-Kader’s name is known to only a tiny fraction of Americans. That fraction includes those knowledgeable about modern Algeria, where his resistance to French colonization places him among the founding figures of an independent nation.

And then there are the 1,500 residents of Elkader, a town in northeastern Iowa, founded and named in 1846 by a frontier lawyer who admired the freedom-fighting exploits of this “daring Arab chieftain.”

Anyone interested in learning more should turn to “Commander of the Faithful” (Monkfish Book Publishing Company), a new book by John W. Kiser.

Mr. Kiser had previously written “The Monks of Tibhirine” (St. Martin’s Press), about Trappist monks in Algeria whose quiet lives of prayer had bonded them with their Muslim neighbors but who were nonetheless taken hostage by Islamic extremists in 1996 and killed.

Mr. Kiser learned about el-Kader (the name is sometimes transliterated from the Arabic in different ways, like al-Qadir or al-Kadir) because the Tibhirine monastery stood on the slope of a mountain where el-Kader had led one of his battles and where a steep cliff face was named after him.

A book about a leader of jihad may seem like a strange sequel to a book about peaceful monks, but the more Mr. Kiser learned about el-Kader, the more he felt a spiritual kinship between the devout, ascetic Trappists and the pious, ascetic guerrilla leader. Both had found in their own religious codes and daily rituals the basis for a fraternity that defied religious boundaries.

As the son of a celebrated holy man, tribal leader and head of a Sufi brotherhood, el-Kader was taught to read and memorize the Koran, tutored in all the details of the tradition but also in philosophy, history and other fields.

At home and away, the young boy was also trained in horseback riding, public speaking and fighting skills. All would prove crucial. In 1832, with France increasingly encroaching on Algerian territory that was only nominally under Ottoman rule, the 25-year-old el-Kader emerged as the commander, the emir, of Muslim Arab resistance.

Because el-Kader was just over five feet tall, Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker, who took a great interest in Algerian affairs, called him a “puny Arab”; but Tocqueville also called him “a Muslim Cromwell.” Like Oliver Cromwell, he wielded strict religious beliefs to form a disciplined fighting force.

Mr. Kiser insists on the religious dimension of what might otherwise be read as a story of military and political maneuvering. But “Commander of the Faithful” is hardly a theological study. It is a dramatic story of quarreling tribes, of Sufi sects and brotherhoods, of treacherous Ottoman officials, rival French generals, secret negotiations, broken truces, terrible atrocities and new forms of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare.

Any number of episodes could inspire novels, like the deep spiritual intimacy that joined the embattled emir and Antoine-Adolphe Dupuch, Roman Catholic bishop of Algiers.
It began in 1841 with the emir’s offer of a prisoner exchange, a humanitarian contrast to the scorched-earth policy being executed by French troops. A decade later, when el-Kader, with his family and entourage, was being held in confinement in France, Bishop Dupuch became a tireless champion of his liberation.

At the end of 1847, el-Kader decided that God did not want any more blood spilled in what had come to be a futile struggle. The emir agreed to lay down arms and expected French officials to honor their promise of exile in the Middle East.

In France, however, the reign of Louis-Philippe was tottering, and he feared public opinion. When the French ship transporting the Algerians arrived in Toulon, they were put under guard.
Little more than a month later, the Revolution of 1848 broke out, and politicians grew even more fearful of stirring public outrage at the idea of freeing the Algerian enemy. It took four years before the mood changed, and Louis Napoleon had the confidence to free the prisoner.

Mr. Kiser does not make undue claims for his book. He had ready access to sources in French and English but not Arabic ones, although he found plenty of guidance in Algeria and Damascus.
As it happens, a major source for the life of el-Kader, in any language, is the work of an eccentric Englishman, Charles Henry Churchill of, yes, those Churchills, who lived in Damascus and sympathized with the Muslim Arab subjects of Ottoman rule. For months throughout the winter of 1859-60, Churchill interviewed the emir daily and published the account in 1869.

Mr. Kiser has provided a “Chronology of Algerian and World Events” that provocatively reminds American readers that while France was launching its military campaigns against Algerian guerrillas the United States was sending troops to quell Native Americans.

But it is hard to read “Commander of the Faithful” without thinking of more recent events — and the author knows this well. Perhaps, he said in a phone conversation, the book might help people “to find in France’s adventure and its ultimate failure some lessons about the world we’re entering today”.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

By Mohammed Wajihuddin /TNN, "'Sufism can be a balm for the pain caused by terrorists'" - The Times Of India - Mumbai, India
Saturday, November 22, 2008

Mumbai: He likens music to a knife-it's up to us how we use it. "A knife can be used to cut an apple and also to slit somebody's throat,'' laughs Yasine El-Tohami, one of the Arab world's most popular Sufi singer-musicians.

El-Tohami is part of ‘Ruhaniyat'-the two-day (November 23-24) annual Sufi-mystic music festival at Horniman Circle Garden at Fort.

El-Tohami and his group belt out the soothing Sufi tunes in these times of terror. "Sufism can be a balm for the wounds and pain caused by terrorists,'' explains the 59-year-old El-Tohami, sitting at a south Mumbai hotel room. Though he doesn't specify any particular Indian mystic gurus as his inspiration, the globe-trotting El-Tohami says visiting India "is a spiritual journey''.

Coming from Assyout, 400 km from south of Cairo (Egypt), El-Tohami says he is influenced by several Arab Sufi giants, including Ibn Arabi, Al-Hallaj and Omar Ibnul Farid.
Accompanied by musicians on instruments like oudh, trumpet, flute and drums, the singer creates haunting tunes.

Interestingly, El-Tohami was educated at Al-Azhar University, Islamic world's most famous seminary which supports an orthodox interpretation of Islam. Before he could go deep into the academic aspect of Islam, El-Tohami felt pulled by the invisible forces of spiritualism and mysticism. Sufism, which considers music an integral part of path to reach the divine, is a taboo in orthodox Islam and most ulema preach a distancing from it.

But Sufism, claims El-Tohami, is not divisive. "Its message is inclusive and goes beyond the barriers of religions and nationalities,'' says the singer.

Coming from a country which produced Umm Kulsum (1904-1975), Arab world's most famous singer-writer, El-Tohami regrets he never met the much-adored singer who had influenced a generation of singers, including Bob Dylan and Maria Callas.

"I grew up listening to Umm Kulsum. I was supposed to meet her the day she died in Cairo. Her matchless voice still rings in my ears,'' raves El-Tohami whose father was also a Sufi-saint in his own right.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Bangalore: An American citizen and visiting professor at a city college was killed on Saturday evening after being hit by a BMTC bus while he was cycling near Ramohalli Gate on Bangalore-Mysore Road.

Brent Hurd (38) was a Fulbright scholar and visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media, Kumbalgodu. Hurd was cycling home after visiting a club on Mysore Road at 7 pm for a round of swimming. Though he was rushed to hospital, he was declared dead on arrival.

A traveller and documentary film-maker, Hurd joined IIJNM in July for a one-year appointment to teach video journalism and documentary. Before that, he taught a summer semester graduate class at American University, Washington DC. During 2007 and 2008, he worked eight months in Azerbaijan as a Fulbright scholar, lecturing at Baku State University.

According to Kanchan Kaur, vice-dean of IIJNM, Hurd's first loves were reporting and filming, both of which he did prolifically. His travels matched his love for exotic stories.

"I have walked the streets of southern Thailand covering religious conflict, canvassed the Medina of Tunis assessing women's rights and studied geysers to understand geothermal technology in Iceland,'' Hurd had written on his website.

Hurd was a Peace Corps volunteer in Plovdiv, Bulgaria; a European tour guide; an adjunct English professor and helped negotiate contracts for construction of the International Space Station. Then he turned to journalism as a writer with the Voice of America. He went on to serve as a news analysis reporter for five years. Among the luminaries he covered are the Dalai Lama and former US presidential candidate Gary Hart.

Hurd had an enduring interest in describing the role of Islam in the modern world, an assignment he took on after the 9/11 attacks as way to explain the religion to shell-shocked Americans.

While on the 2007-2008 Fulbright scholarship in Baku, he produced a documentary, `A Return to Islam'.

At the time of death, he was working on another documentary about Sufism, the mystical side of Islam.

Hurd is survived by his parents, brother and two sisters. After the memorial service at IIJNM on Monday at 11.30 am, his body will be flown to the United States.

But in the city's rapid expansion and growing traffic volume on the stretch from Dilli Darwaja to Shahibaug, the age-old dargah now eats much of pedestrian space and comes as a hindrance in the smooth flow of traffic during busy traffic hours.

One of the local residents, Mushtaq Mohammad Sheikh, 45, says, "My forefathers have lived here under Pir Baba's benediction for long. We keep on hearing about his miraculous powers through our grandparents."

"Razing and shifting the dargah from its position is not an answer to growing traffic problem. Encroachers and street vendors should be managed well to ease the traffic situation here."

Lahore: Whole life is a learning process and search for knowledge continuous throughout the life, said Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.

He was addressing a ceremony at the Forman Christian College University here on Saturday.

"Islam is the religion of peace; it spread through peace and efforts of Sufi saints and not through sword," the governor said.

He advised the students to work hard for the progress of the Pakistan. He also said that now there were a number of new fields and professions for students in science and management.

He thanked the faculty members from abroad for serving Pakistan and said that they should feel in Pakistan as they are in home.

Speaking on the occasion, Rector of the FCU Professor Dr Peter H Arm said: "We are establishing new departments and focusing on infrastructure development to make the university an internationally recognized institution.

Earlier, the Punjab governor distributed prizes among the university graduates.

Monday, November 24, 2008

By AA, "Turkey sends Mevlana's book to worldwide known people" - World Bulletin - Istanbul, Turkey
Friday, November 21, 2008

The Masnavi or Masnavi-I Ma'navi written by Mevlana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism.

Turkey sent great Anatolian philosopher's work to some worldwide known people, a local executive said on Friday.

Tahir Akyurek, the mayor of the central Anatolian province of Konya, said that the municipality had sent Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi's book "Masnavi" to some internationally-known people. "Among them are Pope Benedict XVI, Queen Sofia of Spain, Prince Charles of Wales, and German coach Christoph Daum," Akyurek told AA correspondent.

Akyurek enumerated Vural Oger, a member of the European Parliament; Cem Ozdemir, the co-chairman of the German Green Party; Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, and Swiss President Pascal Couchepin among people to whom the municipality had sent the Masnavi.

The Masnavi, written in Persian, was translated and published in 14 languages including Turkish, English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Arabic, Japan, Albanian, and Swedish, Uzbek, Turkmen and Urdu languages. The mayor said that the book would also be published in several other languages and send to those countries.

Mevlana was born on September 30, 1207 in Balkh in present day Afghanistan. He died in Konya on December 17, 1273. He was laid to eternal rest beside his father and over his remains in a splendid shrine that was erected in Konya.

Mevlana devoted himself to the pursuit of Sufi mysticism, in which he was justly regarded as the supreme master. He was the spiritual founder of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes.

"Come, come again, whoever you are, come! Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come! Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times. Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are," is his famous motto that has been seen as a symbol of tolerance and love for centuries.

The Masnavi or Masnavi-I Ma'navi, written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature. Comprising six books of poems that amount to more than 50,000 lines, it pursues its way through 424 stories that illustrate man's predicament in his search for God.

London: Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art presents the first solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by the Persian born artist Y.Z. Kami, titled Endless Prayers.

This group of works has been created over the past ten years and will be shown for the first time in the UK.

The most striking works in this exhibition are undoubtedly Y.Z. Kami's large and frontal painted portraits of ordinary people, each of whom entirely fills the canvas, often measuring three metres by two metres. Despite their imposing size and intense presence, these portraits are neither flattering nor psychological; rather, they depict the subjects as they are, absorbed in their own world.

This characteristic together with their fresco-like quality, executed using a special painting technique, endows the figures with a certain lack of materiality resembling the Fayum portraits which were painted to accompany Egyptian mummies in their graves.

In some of the paintings the eyes of the subjects are closed, but in others they are open and they gaze either inwardly or at a fixed point in the distance. In most cases it is difficult to establish eye contact and each painted figure seems to carry its own distinct history within itself.

The same frontality and detachment is prevalent in Y.Z. Kami's monumental photographs of Islamic sites and architecture. For Y.Z. Kami, architecture, like human beings, speaks of its own history and at times he combines architecture with portraits of people to create some poignant works, such as Dry Land, 1994-2004 and Konya, 2007.

The exhibition will also feature Y.Z. Kami's works on paper, entitled Endless Prayers. These works are made by gluing countless minute brick-shaped cut-outs from poetry and prayer texts on to the canvas often in circular arrangements, but also according to some Islamic architectural detailing of domes.

The circular and spiralling patterns are inspired by the whirling motions in the rituals of dervishes found in the Mawlavi order of Sufism, who profess that the act of spinning undoes the ego, cleanses them of the self and finds the sole unity of God.

The Mawlavi order of Sufism was founded by the thirteenth century Persian poet, Rumi, whose work has played an important role in Y.Z. Kami's life and work since he began studying it as a young man. The work entitled Konya, 2007, was made in homage to the poet and bears the name of the town where Rumi spent his last years of life, died and has today his mausoleum.

Y.Z. Kami was born in 1956 in Tehran, Iran, and now lives and works in New York.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Ruhaniyat 2008 will introduce the city to Turkish and Egyptian versions of Sufi music

To a generation hooked on to the hybrid Sufi strains that abound Bollywood today, Latif Bolat’s brand of music might be a little surprising, unexpected even.

Because the Turkish singer hardly deviates from the ancient mystic discipline of Betakshi Sufiana, a venerated Turkish classic. However, redemption is close at hand, as Bolat’s strains of Sufiana are all set to waft into the city, this month.

The eighth edition of Ruhaniyat, which travels to the city, for the second time, has roped in several stalwarts of music and mysticism who otherwise are quite lost on the humdrum of urban pursuits.

“Most of these artistes are very rooted in the rural traditions. In fact villages are the seats of Sufi music. We have tried to familiarise them with an urban audience and vice versa,” says Manoj Babu, creative director of Banyan Tree Events, which has been organising Ruhaniyat.

In fact, Ruhaniyat was started with the motive to revive Sufi music in the cities which were being misled by the watered down, remixed popular versions. So from bauls to qawwalis, and from Turkey to Egypt, Ruhaniyat has handpicked the most interesting performers from the several genres of Sufi music.

Apart from the staple Sufi Kalam compositions to be performed by a group from Rajasthan, Kolkata will be treated to Jagar by artistes from Uttaranchal. Jagar usually revolves around penance and is performed during the nights. Local ballads and references to epics comprise this form which increases in tempo in course of the performance and reaches a feverish pitch, which culminates in frenzied dance movements.

“It is believed that Jagar was traditionally performed to invoke the spirit of a dead in a living person’s body,” says a representative of Banyan Tree Events.

Bolat and Arabic Sufi performer Mohammad Farghaly from Egypt are the star attractions of Ruhaniyat this year.

“While Bolat sticks to ancient Turkish mysticism, he also relates the same with contemporary society and politics,” says Babu. Bolat, now based in the US, is known to create an intimate atmosphere embarking on a storytelling process explaining the sociopolitical elements of Turkish folk traditions.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Known for his many works as a film maker and a designer, Muzaffar Ali is now ready to edit a spiritual magazine

When the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Indo-Swiss Friendship Treaty took off in Jaipur last week, amidst a strong presence of both Indian and Swiss delegates, film-maker and designer Muzaffar Ali seemed to represent the Indian intelligentsia.

Ali in his trademark style – sporting his white flowing hair and a smart black outfit, turned up for the pre-launch of the event, and even before anyone had, had the chance to chat with him, he had disappeared.

He had apparently gone to pray at the dargah in Ajmer. “I told myself, no matter how short my visit is this time, I will definitely visit the dargah,” said Ali, as he spoke to us on the phone on his way back from Ajmer.

His religious visit over, he was ready to talk about things spiritual. “I am coming up with a magazine called Who which is a spiritual magazine with Sufism as its principle,” shares the maverick director, credited to have made the hugely famous Umrao Jaan in 1981.

And it’s this magazine that brought him to Jaipur. He wanted to share the concept of the magazine with the people of the Pink City. “I know Jaipur as a very cultural city where people still are some what in touch with their history. The response was good and they were really interested in knowing more and more about the magazine,” says Ali adding, “I have been here many times in the past and get that peace that people usually hunt for in metropolitan cities like Delhi. It is good to find people here who are comparatively relaxed and have time for each other.”

So, he is fond of Jaipur, as he is of history. And his next two projects will be based on historical stories, and at least one will be shot in Jaipur.

“Of the two stories, one is based on the life of a Rumi poet and the other on Noorjahan and Jahangir,” he reveals. And while one has heard of Ali crossing the border to Pakistan in search of the cast for his movie, for locations, his hunt has brought him to Jaipur.

“Though it will be too early to predict anything, but I am planning to shoot most parts of the film on Noorjahan and Jahangir in Jaipur and use the heritage and craft of the city. I also will try to use the craftsmen from Jaipur in my movie,” he adds.

The Padma Shri awardee has been known as a filmmaker who has introduced the audience to various subjects and has never used cinema solely as a medium of entertainment. Is that intentional, we ask.

“We need to learn that movies are not just about entertainment, at least I don’t take movies that way. I think it is a vast arena and so interesting that the more you try to go deep into it, the more you get involved. There is so much to be explored about film making. When I think of film making, I think I still have a long way to go,” he says, his tone almost confessional.

Coming back to his films, we ask, why he has chosen two historical subjects this time around, and even before the question is complete, he says, “Because history fascinates me. There is so much for people to know about in history. In future too, I might just be making films based on history because it’s my passion”.

"Ahmedabad Heritage Centre(AHC) is coordinating this whole noble initiative which will feature special walks, street theatre, festivals and workshops, art exhibitions, film shows, house museums and display of collections," added Nayak.

Also a Sufi festival which will be part of the celebration will be organised on November 21 at Sarkhej Roza, Sarkhej.

Sheikha Khadija Radin, who is a senior teacher in the Mevlevi Order of America and the Sufi Ruhaniat International, will be perfoming the practice of whirling during the festival.

Khadija has pioneered the integration of whirling with Western movement to create a mesmerising and graceful mode of spiritual practice.

[Picture: Sheikha Khadija turning, 1982. Photo from the Mevlevi Order of America website. Click http://www.whirlingdervish.org/index.htm also for Sheikha Khadija's full program (18-23) in Ahmedabad and Mumbai.].

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Islamabad: New awards for folk literature and children literature will be introduced if reasonable books on the subject are published every year, said Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) Chairman Fakhar Zaman on Friday during a meeting with the academy’s resident directors (RDs).

The meeting decided that the PAL Life Fellowship would be conferred on senior authors known for their progressive and enlightened writings.

The chairman directed the RDs to hold two seminars on literature, history, philosophy and sociology a month in their respective region.

In this regard, first seminar will be held on the topic “Fall of Capitalism” and the second one on “Historical Prospectus of Sufism”.

The meeting decided that the RDs would undertake an assignment for compilation of History of Pakistani literature.

Literary calendarZaman appreciated a proposal for printing of a literary calendar containing a brief note on life, sketches and selection from leading poets. Twenty-four sufi poets of Pakistan will be featured in this calendar that will be compiled by the PAL in co-ordination with its RDs.

“The PAL will request the prime minister to earmark funds for it and upgrade its provincial offices set up in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta,” Zaman said.

During the meeting, it was also decided that Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi and Quetta-based offices of the academy would hold writers’ conference in February, March, April and May next year respectively.

Vice Chancellor, University of Jammu Professor Amitabh Mattoo on Friday said that the cultural heritage of Jammu and Kashmir cuts across all the regional, religious and ethnic barriers.

"Three regions (Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh) may apparently look different keeping in view the geographical factors, but they have so much in common, acquired through age old association amongst the people of the State that it will be a stupendous task to isolate them culturally and politically," said Professor Amitabh Mattoo who was delivering presidential address during the release of a Newsletter "Thati" and Website of the Centre for studies in Museology and Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani Museum of Heritage University of Jammu here this morning in General Zorawar Singh Auditorium.

Director General of Police Kuldeep Khuda was chief guest of the function. Professor Amitabh Mattoo said that University of Jammu's remarkable features reflects tradition of Jammu region and General Zorawer Singh Auditorium reflects Cultural heritage of all the three regions of the state.

"A treasure house showcasing the Sufi tradition of the Kashmir valley, the Duggar ethos of the Jammu region and Ladakh's Lama culture has been set up in the Jammu University, General Zorawer Singh Auditorium itself speak the rich cultural and ethnic bond of Jammu and Kashmir State," Professor Amitabh Mattoo said adding that it is a gift of Jammu University to the brave Dogras for showcasing the treasures that represent the culture, ethos, paintings, history, heritage and art besides old manuscripts of Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Amitabh Mattoo said that University of Jammu give a glimpse of history through pictures and artifacts, "The art gallery is named after scholar and translator Lotsava Richen Bzangoo (958-1055 AD) -- the great Buddhist saint of ladakh --, houses classical pieces of art and artefacts of Ladakh, including oil paintings and wooden and stone sculptures by renowned artists," Professor Amitabh Mattoo said adding that the Nund Reshi museum, named after Kashmiri Sufi saint Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani, depicts not only traditions but inter-cultural aspects that have been the hallmark of the Sufi tradition.

Professor Mattoo further said that the contribution of the scholars of this State to Sanskrit literature has simply been remarkable. Names of Pt. Kalhana, Bilhan, Mammat, Abhinav Gupta and many others have gone down as legends in the history of scholarship.

"Today the greatest need for scholars and artistes of the State is to rise to the occasion and play an important role in maintaining and preserving our national integration and cultural heritage so that we come out of this temporary phase of turbulence and uncertainty to emerge stronger in future because divisions on the basis of religion, region or language or caste has not been our tradition. Such aberration and estrangement of our people from the national mainstream is to be resisted strongly," added Professor Amitabh Mattoo.

Director General of Police Kuldeep Khuda while speaking on the occasion said that the people of Jammu and Kashmir should be proud of Cultural heritage of the state as the J&K state is traditionally rich and this land has given birth to the renowned Sofi's and Saints.

"The renowned Sofi Sheikh Noor-Ud-Din Norrani who was the most secular person, worked for peace and humanity throughout his life," said Kuldeep Khuda. He said that the State has a unique distinction of being a place where people from all walks of life and from all across the world have been coming to seek peace, knowledge and spiritual enlightenment.

"Kashmir which has traditionally been called the place of saints, has remained a seat of learning for years together," he said adding that unfortunately, during the recent past we have been witnessing a spurt of violence and intolerance where all human values have been thrown to the winds and unprecedented levels of crime, cruelty and outrage of humankind have been let loose.

While appreciating the role played by Professor Amitabh Mattoo as Vice Chancellor, University of Jammu, Kuldeep Khuda said that the way Prof. Amitabh Mattoo is leading the University of Jammu for the last six year; the Varsity has emerged as the leading educational hub of the world. "It was the leadership of Prof. Amitabh Mattoo that University of Jammu has emerged globally in all the fields. We wish success to Prof. Amitabh Mattoo in near future but we the people of the state expects that in future also he will work for the Jammu University to add more and more feathers to its cap," he added.

Earlier in the welcome address, Prof. Poonam Chowdhary, Director Centre for studies in Museology and Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani Musium of Heritage University of Jammu said that way back in 2004, Prof. Amitabh Mattoo decided to name the Museum of Heritage after the name of Sufi Saint, Noor-Ud-Din Noorani, who is considered to be the best representative of the composite culture of the state.

Speaking on the occasion, district nazim said Sufi saint Qadir Bux Bedal taught the lesson of love and brotherhood. He directed the authorities concerned to complete the project of mazar auditorium within stipulated time. He also announced a grant of Rs100,000 for the publication of books of Faqir Qadir Bux Bedil and arrangements of the Urs.

The Urs celebration would continue for three days. On Saturday, the last day of the Urs, Mushira and Adbi Conference would be held. Sindh Minister for Culture Sassi Palejo will be the chief guest on the occasion.

The setting was perfect for the task at hand -- the pristine, alpine grounds of the Aspen Institute, freshly dusted with a coating of snow, in the offseason quiet of Aspen, Colo.

More than 150 religious leaders from diverse traditions -- monastic Christian, Sufi Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Native American and others -- gathered last week in the Colorado ski town to try to figure out how best to speak with one voice on the issue of peace (and justice), and how to encourage President-elect Barack Obama to make compassionate decisions in his new administration.

It's at once a simple and ambitious task. Often in an interfaith (as it's commonly called) crowd such as this, finding common ground -- or even a common vocabulary -- can be a challenge in and of itself. But that wasn't a hurdle at the Global Peace Initiative of Women's "Gathering Spiritual Voices of America," where I was invited both to observe and participate in setting an agenda for compassionate, contemplative social action.

There was a remarkable level of cohesion among the august cohort of religious leaders assembled in Aspen, that included the Rev. Thomas Keating, a Catholic monk and founder of the Centering Prayer movement; Joan Brown Campbell, former head of the National Council of Churches; Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Salomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement; Kenneth Frost, spiritual leader of the Ute Nation; Swami Atmarupananda, the senior monastic at the Ramakrishna Mission; the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, chairman of the American Buddhist Association; Lama Surya Das, Sister Joan Chittister, and the president of Naropa University in Boulder (the first Buddhist-based institute of higher education in the nation.)

The conference was purposely scheduled to begin just two days after the presidential election, and the first slice of common ground that was blatantly evident was an unfettered elation at Obama's election.

Most participants spoke lovingly of Obama -- with a sort of spiritual reverence -- the man upon whom they've rested immense hope for the rebirth (spiritually and otherwise) of the nation and the ushering in of a more peaceable, healthy world.

"The national soul is now asserting and coming forward and choosing to serve humanity," said Sraddhalu Ranade, an educator and scientist from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India.

" 'Blessing' Obama took the mantle, stood to his feet, and said, 'Yes,' " said the Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, founding director of the Aspen Wisdom School, calling the president-elect by the English translation of his Arabic first name. "We get a sense of what a human being is when we stand up and become one of the responsible ones. And it was beautiful. But he can't stand up alone."

Obama's election was, for many of the leaders present, an indication not only of a shift in political power, but of spiritual power as well. Among the issues the leaders agreed were most pressing -- the economy, the environment, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, global poverty -- as the president-elect looks toward setting his agenda for the all-important first 100 days of his administration, was helping the nation heal from what many said was eight years of fear-mongering.

Some called Obama a prophet. Others spoke of him almost as a savior. But as the conference wore on, cooler heads prevailed. "This transformation is not about Barack Obama, it's about us," Brown Campbell said on the last day of the five-day conference. "We make heroes of people too quickly and . . . rest the responsibility on his shoulders [alone]. He's always said 'us.' Every time it's pointed to him he's said, 'No. It's all of us.' "

A Chicago industrialist named Walter Paepcke founded the Aspen Institute, which hosted the peace conference, in the 1950s to be a place where "the human spirit can flourish." He ended up transforming the tiny mining town into a haven for artists, thinkers and leaders from all over the world. Paepcke, reportedly inspired by the Great Books program at the University of Chicago, began the intellectual endeavor that eventually became the Aspen Institute in 1949, by hosting an international celebration for the 200th birthday of the German poet Johann Wolfgang van Goethe.

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home," Goethe said.

While the conference ended without a final document outlining agenda points and spiritual marching orders for the new president-elect -- leaders are crafting a letter for Obama and hope to deliver it to him in the New Year -- it concluded on a note of profound unity.

The assembled ministers, imams, swamis, yogis, rabbis, healers, and just plain faithful, prayed together many times during the conference. For Obama. For President Bush. For, as one woman put it, "the karmic knot to be untied."

On Sunday afternoon, before they scattered to the four winds, the spiritual leaders held hands in three concentric circles for a Sufi zikr -- a prayer ritual. They chanted praise to God, asked for blessings of peace, and concluded by singing the Christian hymn "Amazing Grace" over and over again while dancing a simple side step.

"I once was lost, but now am found," they sang, "was blind but now I see."
It was both a prayer and a declaration of faith.

And it was also a hope, that we all -- including our elected leaders -- might work for peace and act with compassion and grace.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

DVD Reviews: Another visual feast this week is Ron Fricke's restored 1992 film Baraka, its title a Sufi term translating as 'blessing' or 'breath of life'.

With its achingly beautiful visuals and hypnotic soundtrack by the likes of Michael Stearns and Dead Can Dance fusing to create a ravishing poem to the planet and mankind's relationship to it, this feels like both.

Fricke was the director of photography on Koyaanisqatsi and this transcendental, uplifting experience sits admirably alongside it as breathtaking footage from 24 global locations weaves majestic panoramas of deserts, mountain ranges and rainforests into exotic wildlife and human society in all its diversity, from time-lapse shots of hurried commuters to Balinese singers performing the Kecak monkey chant, tranquil mystics and exotic shamen.

Baraka is an overwhelmingly rich experience which grows steadily more hypnotic as it progresses, saying much about planet Earth without uttering a word. Simply magnificent.

Extras in this two-disc set include the documentary Baraka - A Closer Look and a feature on the painstaking restoration process.

By John Wendle, "Tajik Songs of Sky And Destiny at Fest" - The Moscow Times - Moscow, Russia
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Over the next few days, the sounds of the deep south of Tajikistan, the plains of Mongolia and the mountains of Kyrgyzstan will be heard around Moscow as part of the Rozamira festival.

The festival, a mix of art and music, aims to bring cultures closer to each other and will finish with a performance by one of Tajikistan's most famous singers, Dawlatmand Kholov, with the music he brought down from the mountains and has sung around the world -- former French President Jacques Chirac is said to be a fan.

Kholov comes from the southern Tajik city of Kulyab, a small city in a green mountain valley closer to the arid border of Afghanistan than to the relative bustle of Dushanbe.

It was through Afghanistan that Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, reached his high mountain valley.

The group plays the traditional instruments of their mountainous region in a song form known as falak, which translates as "vault of the sky" or "destiny." Falak songs usually talk of separation or despair and are often addressed to the sky.

Falak "is the voice of the people in the mountains crying out to God and to the heavens to hear them. It is their misery and their delight at how the heavens have treated them," writes Mehdi Jami, the maker of the documentary "Meeting Dawlatmand and Whirling Tajik Dancers" about the musician, on the film's web site*.

Kholov, who leads his five sons in the ensemble as well as 10 other musicians, is also one of the leading musicians inspired by Sufism.

"It is hard not to feel the depth of the Sufi traditions and ... the deep philosophical mysticism of the music," said Yaroslava Ziva-Chernova, a spokeswoman for Rozamira. "This is very traditional Tajik music."

Besides the well-known sitar, the group plays more exotic instruments such as the konun -- an ancient stringed instrument -- the rubab, the labchang, the saz -- a lute-like instrument -- as well as the khidzhak, an instrument typical of Tajikistan that resembles a violin. In short, the instruments are as diverse as the dialects of Farsi found in the high mountain valleys of the Pamirs.

The ensemble also plays the daf, a goat-skin frame drum that is usually only played during Sufi religious rituals.

Many of the songs Kholov plays are inspired by Rumi, a 13th-century Sufi mystic poet from Persia. The poetry of Rumi, who is claimed as a national poet in Tajikistan as well as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, bridged the gap between the spirituality of Sufi Islam and the imperfection of the real world.

"In Central Asia, music and dance have played a vital role in the social life of the people to preserve their rich heritage and literature," writes Jami on her web site.

"Dawlatmand Kholov is a symbolic figure representing an integral part of a culture and a unique form of music, falak. He uses this form to convey the poetic and Sufi principles embedded in their daily life," writes Jami.

The first performer in the festival will be Salamat Sadykova, once a popular Soviet artist and today an ambassador of Kyrgyz music around the world. Sadykova learned to play the komuz, a traditional Central Asian instrument similar to a lute, at a young age.

Raised by her grandmother, a singer of the traditional koshok, or funeral dirge, Sadykova began singing early and had great success at making traditional Kyrgyz music accessible. Also playing at Rozamira will be the band 4:33, who will play alongside the group Namgar fusing the sounds of Mongolia and southern Siberian nomads with modern electronica.

Monday, November 17, 2008

By Paul Goble, "Moscow and Grozny Each Seek to Exploit Sufism Abroad for Their Own Ends" - Georgian Daily - New York, NY, USA

Vienna: In the last decades of the Soviet period, Western analysts like Alexander Bennigsen and Enders Wimbush called attention not only to the many ways in which Sufism not only helped to keep Islam alive under communism but also to how it this mystical trend in Islam contributed the rise of national movements in the Muslim parts of the USSR.

But now, in a remarkable turnabout, Moscow and Grozny each appear to view at least one strand of Sufism -- that of Kunta-Haji, the founder of the Qadyria order in Chechnya 150 years ago -- as a possible means of expanding their standing with and influence on Islamic intellectuals beyond their respective borders in the Arab world and Africa.

At one level, the interests of Moscow and Grozny do in fact coincide: Both could benefit from being seen as supporters of this intriguing school of Muslim thought. But at another, deeper one, they clearly diverge, with Moscow wanting to penetrate that world while Grozny hopes to develop a resource that could give it greater flexibility vis-à-vis Moscow.

In recent months, there has been a spate of articles about Kunta-Haji, a thinker widely known in the Muslim world but little known beyond it. (For two intriguing recent examples, visit here and in particular Shamil Shikhaliyev’s analysis that was posted online last week).

But the role that Moscow and Grozny hope Kunta-Haji’s legacy will given them was highlighted more clearly by the decision earlier this year of the Russian and Chechen governments to name the new Russian Islamic University after the 19th century Sufi and by a comment on Friday by the chief mufti of Chechnya.

Sultan Mirzayev, head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of the Chechen Republic, told Islamrf.ru that the teachings of Kunta-Haji currently have “approximately two million followers” in Libya, Senegal, Mauritania and other African countries as well as in Europe. The Chechen mufti said that while in Libya, where he was received by Muammar Qadaffi, he met with leaders of the Islamic Appeal, an international body within the Muslim world, and discovered that the ideas of Kunta-Haji had penetrated Senegal and Chad already in the nineteenth century.

And Islamrf.ru added that some Chechen scholars believe that Kunta-Haji may have travelled to Africa between 1858 when he left his homeland because of differences with Sheikh Shamil and 1861 when he is known to have returned. But most specialists think that Kunta-Haji’s ideas spread there via Chechen Muslims performing the haj to Mecca.

But in order to understand why both Moscow and Grozny think they may be able to exploit Kunta-haji, it is important to know rather more about his life, his thought and perhaps especially the amazingly contradictory ways in which his thought has been applied by others not only in Chechnya but elsewhere as well.

Born in the Chechen village of Melcha-Hi sometime around 1830, Kunta made the pilgrimage to Mecca at 18 and acquired the honorific haji by which he is known. After returning to his homeland, he condemned the war Imam Shamil was waging against Russian forces, arguing that “spiritual independence” was more important than fighting an external enemy.

Not surprisingly, Shamil was furious at what Kunta-Haji was preaching, especially when the latter attracted a large number of followers by his mysticism, reflected in ecstatic dances, and is essentially pacifist views in the midst of the war. Even worse from Shamil’s point of view, Kunta-Haji said Turkey would not help Shamil’s forces, an accurate but unpleasant conclusion.

And more intriguing still for the way in which his thought has echoed since that time, Kunta-Haji sought to bridge the gap between the traditional norms of the region (adab) and shariat law and drew on ideas from other religions including Christianity, Judaism, and even Buddhism.
Because of his differences with Shamil, however, Kunta-Haji in 1858 left for another pilgrimage. But when he returned three years later, he attracted to his Qadiria order some 6,000 adepts, making him one of the most influential figures in the region, particularly after Shamil himself was taken prisoner by the Russians.

Kunta-Haji’s growing influence and his unorthodox views led more orthodox Islamic mullahs to denounce him to the Russian authorities, and in January 1864, he was arrested, imprisoned, and ultimately exiled to a small town in Novgorod Gubernia. There, three years later, on May 19, 1867, he died alone.

After his death, the followers of Kunta-Haji refused to elect a new sheikh or master, preferring to organize themselves in a council until his return. And because of that, it happened that at the time of the 1917 revolution and again after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, his followers became some of the most militant anti-Russian forces of all.

Indeed, according to many students of Chechnya, Kunta-Haji’s Qadiria order played a key role in the coming to power of Jokhar Dudayev in 1991 and continue to serve as the state religion of Chechnya, with its adepts sometimes stressing Kunta-Haji’s opposition to violence and at others his support for the right of his followers to organize themselves.

Given the dual nature of Kunta-Haji’s teachings, it is obvious why both Moscow and Grozny are interested in making use of him. For Moscow, his pacifistic views play to the Russian government’s professed opposition to terrorism and allow Moscow to reach out to one of a strain in Islamic thought that maintains links to Christians, Jews and Hindus.

But for Grozny, the game is more complex. On the one hand, the Chechen authorities are clearly interested in promoting a version of Islam Moscow is comfortable with, at least in the short term. But on the other, they are certainly aware that the spread of Kunta-Haji’s teachings in the Middle East and Africa gives them a new resource.

At the very least, it means that Chechnya will occupy a more prominent role in Moscow’s policies toward the Muslim world, a role few in the Russian capital will want to dispense with. But more than that, it gives Chechnya leverage against Moscow by generating for Grozny a new source of support abroad, support that could in time be turned against Russia.

New Delhi: With a Fatwa against terrorism issued by Islamic clerics recently, Delhi Police, along with the clerics, is doing its bit for ensuring no more terror attacks take place in the city.

According to a senior police official, plans are being drawn up to impart education about Islam to young Muslims with the help of clerics from neutral Muslim organisations. This will address those who are vulnerable to get manipulated into terror in the name of religion.

"Except Atif Bashir, who was killed in the Jamia Nagar encounter, all the Indian Mujahideen men arrested in connection with the Delhi blasts are products of public schools and not madarsas. They haven't been subjected to communal discrimination. However, on questioning them we realised they have no knowledge of the Quran. Hence, they were manipulated by Atif. He told them things like Jehad means a war against non-muslims and anyone who fights for Jehad becomes a hero,'' said the official.

He added that most of those arrested were from the Bareilwi sect which is more inclined towards Sufism and is largely not fundamental at all.

Reportedly, the terrorists were given "study material'' to read from, which included a book called `Jungle Pukarte Hain'. "It's a collection of short stories about Afghani militants who fought against the army. There are stories to make them believe Allah helps those who fight against non-muslims,'' said the cop. He added that more such books were being identified to stop their publication.

Clerics across the city agreed to the proposal of religious education to the youth. "Terrorism is neither Hindu nor Muslim, it is against humanity. Although it is not the police's job to start imparting education, we agree that to make a good citizen, moral and religious education is of prime importance. People don't turn to terror because they study in a madarsa or because they are Hindu or Muslim. They take to arms because of the money-oriented education given to them without imparting moral values,'' said Maulana Mahmood Madani from Jamait Ulema-e-Hind.

He added he was a part of the Fatwa issued against terror in Hyderabad on November 8 and these things were discussed there too. "Imbibing good Indian values, in addition to basic education, in youngsters from an early age will benefit. This is a long-term strategy which has to be taken up immediately. Unless we take a holistic approach to terrorism, we will suffer for years to come. If we start this now, the results will show 20 years from now,'' he said.

Another cleric said, "Islam is the religion of mercy for all humanity. It has given so much importance to human beings that it regards a single person's killing as the killing of humanity. It condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism. Unless the present and future generations understand this ideology of Islam, there will be danger to humanity''.

Accra (Ghana) - The ring Osman Mustapha wears on his right index finger was too tarnished to reflect the harsh African sun that pushed his eyes into slits and drew beads of sweat from his brow. That small piece of silver, though only a trinket, was a matter of both pride and principle to Mustapha as he studied it from the schoolyard.

“It is for protection from anything that might happen to me – you know, illnesses, car accidents, things like that,” said Mustapha, a teacher and former student of the Islamic Training Institute here. “Some people would tell you that this is all wrong. It isn’t wrong. It’s our culture.”

Such talismans are not unusual in Ghana, where roughly 12% of the population still identifies itself with traditional African religions. But on the finger of a Muslim, Mustapha’s ring is a prime example of what Wahabia, or more puritan Muslims, might call a corruption of Koranic law, and an example of how Ghanaian culture can stand at odds with Islam.

“That’s tantamount to polytheism,” said Yacomb Abban, general secretary of Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at, a large Muslim sect here, of such charms. “If you wear a charm, you are saying that it can protect you. If you think God cannot protect you, then you don’t know who God is.”

For decades, the Wahabia in Ghana, represented by Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at since 1997, have cultivated a complex infrastructure of international scholarships to send high-performing Muslim students to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, where, as Abban put it, they can receive an education in proper Islam.

Since the need for higher education in Ghana greatly exceeds its availability, students who can afford it often travel abroad for education. But these scholarships are believed by some to have implicit strings attached.

“All Ahlus Sunna, they come from Saudi Arabia. They are the Wahabia. You go and come back to tell people that some of our African culture is bad. They tell you that in Saudi Arabia,” Mustapha said.

Scholarships arranged through Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at are generally given by universities in the Middle East, and can cover tuition, living expenses and an annual plane ticket home for up to 10 years. Upon returning to Ghana, these graduates often take up positions of prominence within the Muslim community, and are relied upon as teachers.

“It is one of our principles to educate Muslims on how their religion must be practiced. When you have a culture that is against the teachings of the Koran, you must take out that culture,” Abban said.

Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at publicly condemns traditional Ghanaian funeral celebrations, which can be elaborate and lengthy affairs, as well as the use of traditional charms and amulets, certain tribal healing methods, veneration of sheiks and celebrations of the prophet Mohammed’s birthday.

While Abban did not condemn all elements of African culture, he said that true Islam simply does not allow for certain aspects of it. He “believes that Islam should be practiced according to the tradition of the prophet. No additions, no abstractions, no interpretations.

Lacking reputable Islamic universities in Ghana, Abban will continue to encourage as many students to study abroad as scholarships from foreign benefactors allow.

Prof. Nathan Samwini of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology pointed to the oil boom as one of the primary reasons for fund availability. “How much is a scholarship for one, or even 10 students, to an oil-rich country, if it means spreading your religious beliefs? I still have yet to figure out exactly where the scholarship money comes from, and no one has been able to properly explain it to me,” Samwini said.

Even leaders of Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at cannot pinpoint the exact source of the money. They are simply notified of how many scholarships have been awarded to Ghana, and are then left to distribute them. Abban suspects these might come from the universities, as part of a budget for helping underdeveloped countries.

Since Ghana received its independence from Great Britain in 1957, it has seen steadily increasing support from the Middle East, beginning with the opening of the Egyptian and Saudi Arabia embassies in Accra in the 1960s. The involvement of various Middle Eastern countries in Africa, however, is not solely confined to education.

“Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait are all invested in helping the poor,” said Sheik Mustapha Yaajalal, the proprietor and founder of the Islamic Training Institute.

His school has flooded and collapsed five times since its construction in 1984, and each time Yaajalal received both financial and volunteer aid from Iran to help him to reopen it. The mosque behind the school where he leads prayer every Friday was a gift from Kuwait.

While grateful for the foreign aid, Yaajalal said that his theology would be harshly criticized in the places from which he received so much help. “Sufis must live in secret when they go somewhere like Saudi Arabia,” said Yaajalal, a Sufi himself, and a firm believer in many of the practices that are condemned by Wahabia.

The 1980s and 1990s saw a great deal of tension between Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at and Tijaniyya Muslims, the other sizeable Islamic sect in Ghana, and Samwini said that the heavy influence of students returning from the Arabian Peninsula probably ignited the violence.

“Those who integrated back into society did not get along. Thankfully they have mellowed and the violence has subsided, but the sects still do not get along,” he said.

Over the last decade, Ghana has seen very little religious violence, and Samwini said that Muslims here have developed the ability to co-exist — so it would be difficult for extremist factions from the Middle East to transplant themselves here.

“This is not a country where hot-headed Muslims can survive. The tolerance level here is unparalleled in all of West Africa,” he said.

That peaceful co-existence that has prevented major violence in Ghana since the mid-1990s is also what he hopes will prevent organizations like Al-Qaeda from establishing a presence in Ghana. Yet tension remains between different sects that wish to see African Islam chart a particular course. Osman Mustapha is a prime example.

“I believe everything from the Koran. But there are some things they will not show a man in Saudi Arabia. They do not know the secrets of the Koran. You will find those in Africa,” he said.

Samantha Bryson is a Student of Journalism at Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and can be contacted at nyu.livewire@gmail.com

By Dalal Moosa, "A World of Faith" - NYU Live Wire - New York, NY, USA
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A young religious activist and his ambitious plan for global harmony

Frank Fredericks was on a long, wandering trip through the Mediterranean, visiting friends and learning Arabic, when he heard a news report that would change his life.

It was a humid summer morning in coastal Larnaca, Cyprus, where he’d just woken up after a working a long night shift at a restaurant. On the news, he heard that Israel had just bombed Beirut’s International Airport. Lebanese Hezbollah fighters were firing guns and rockets. Soon, thousands of Lebanese-Americans, fleeing by boat, would land in Cyprus.

Fredericks, a recent college graduate who had been working on a paper about Christian-Muslim relations, decided to help. He called the American Embassy, and was dispatched to an evacuation camp in Nicosia, the Cypriot capital. There he handed out food supplies, helped at a medical clinic and listened to arriving evacuees tell their angry stories about Israel’s bombing of towns in Lebanon.

“Lebanon was a madhouse,” Fredericks recalled. But through the chaos, something came into focus.

“You find these people in the evacuation camps—a thousand people in one room, rich and poor, Sunni and Shiite, Christian and Muslim, kids and old people—they were all together, equal, no divisions.”

Fredericks, who went to a Christian high school, decided on the spot to begin a group to promote interfaith harmony. In the fall of 2006, he founded the organization World Faith. Its mission: “To reveal the humanity of the other.”

Today Fredericks, a native of Portland, Oregon, runs this small but flourishing not-for-profit from his New York City apartment. World Faith dispatches local students to soup kitchens and food pantries, and to coordinate international volunteer exchanges.

“We have three goals,” Fredericks explained. “One is action itself and community service. Two is interfaith dialogue, and three is utilizing the media to counter religious extremism and prove that we can use our religious traditions for peace-building efforts rather than division, war and hate.”

World Faith recently hosted its first international exchange program, the Lebanon Project. With $12,000 the group raised, Fredericks accompanied three Jewish students, two Christian students and three Muslim students on a trip to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon’s Beqa’a Valley. They visited schools, and worked with Palestinian children to create art and plant trees.

Josh Martin, a British Jew, helped found the project. He’d spent the previous winter helping Israelis left bereft by the 2006 conflict.

“While there, I wondered about Lebanon, specifically the hundreds of thousands of refugees and others whose lives were directly altered because of the violence,” he said. “No one appeared to be doing anything to help out.”

An attempt to found a chapter in Lebanon fizzled, but since then fledgling chapters have formed in Cairo and Sudan, with plans for a presence in several other U.S. and international cities.

Next World Faith is planning an international exchange in India, to encourage Americans to volunteer at orphanages and clinics, and to work with Hindu and Muslim young people in regions of religious conflict, around New Delhi and Ahmadabad. The group will also make a documentary. The project is the brainchild of Chicago interfaith activist Soofia Ahmed.

“The youth are really rising up,” said Ahmed, 22. “They’re really seeing how big of an issue religious pluralism is, how faith is being used for destructive means, but how it can also be used for productive ones.”

Dalal Moosa is a Student of Journalism at Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and can be contacted at dalal.moosa@nyu.edu

[Pictures: 1) Palestinian boys paint their version of peace at a Chtoura, Lebanon, primary school, as part of a World Faith project in Lebanon. 2) Palestinian girls in Lebanon show off their paintings of peace. Photos: Courtesy of Frank Fredericks].

Ankara: Thousands of people from a liberal Muslim sect, the Alevis, took to the streets here on Sunday, denouncing the Islamist-rooted government and calling for equal religious rights.

About 50,000 people, arriving from all parts of the country, gathered in downtown Ankara, chanting slogans against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and dancing traditional Alevi dances.

Protestors carried Turkish flags and portraits of Turkey's secularist founder Ataturk and placards with slogans such as: "End discrimination" and "Turkey is secular, it will remain secular."

"The AK Party ignores the rights of 20 million Alevis in this country. This shows that they are not honest with their talk of religious freedoms," said Suleyman Erseven, a 48-year old demonstrator.

The main Alevi demands include an end to Sunni dominance in the religious affairs directorate, the government agency regulating Muslim affairs; the abolition of compulsory religion classes in schools; and the recognition of Alevi temples as places of worship.

Turkey's sizeable Alevi sect is a distant relative of Shiite Islam, known for its traditionally leftist and secularist leanings. It has long been suppressed by the Sunni majority.

The Alevi faith, closely related to Sufism and Anatolian folk culture, is the specifically Turkish version of Alawism, prominent also in Syria.

They say that despite its advocacy of broader religious freedoms, the AKP government has done little on promises for reconciliation with the Alevis, who account for 15 to 20 million of Turkey's 70-million population.

Many Alevis tend to support secularist parties because they fear Islamists will put further restrictions on their faith. They say the AK Party strives to expand freedoms for Sunni Muslims, while ignoring the demands of Alevis.

Some protesters called for abolishing the Religious Affairs Directorate, which they say is defending Sunni Islam. The directorate tightly regulates Turkey's thousands of mosques, appoints imams, pays their salaries and approve sermons for Friday prayers.

Alevi representatives also said the government should stop building mosques in Alevi villages. Most Alevis do not attend mosques but prefer gathering in houses of prayer, called Cemevi, where women and men pray together.

The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, has also urged Ankara to expand Alevi rights.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Karachi: The courtyard of a local hotel located on the edge of the Arabian Sea was a sight to behold, with men and women attired in traditional Thari dresses dancing to the rhythm of Thari or desert music.

The occasion was the fourth annual Manghaar festival, organised by the Folklore Society of Pakistan, in collaboration with the European Union.

The festival aims to highlight the neglected folk music of Pakistan and the aim was duly fulfilled, with more than a dozen folk singers and Manganhaars from Sindh and Punjab, including dholak player Muhammad Yaqoob from Rahim Yar Khan, banjo player Ghulam Hussain, harmonium player Ghulam Sabbir and other folk singers from Umerkot, Chhachro, Hyderabad and Rahim Yar Khan, churning out entrancing beats till after midnight.

The literal meaning of the word Manganhaar is a ‘beggar’ but it also refers to a cohesive ethnic community that has a rich heritage of traditional folk music and resides on both sides of the Indo-Pak border.

While in India, the community concentrates in Jaisalmer, Barmer and Jalore, this side of the border, most of the Manganhaars live in the Thar desert, located in northern Sindh and the south of Punjab.

“The colours and essence of Sufism and traditional Thari music are in the air tonight,” said Kirshan Lal Bheel of Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab, “Manganhaars are above religions and have devoted their lives to the survival of folk music.” Bheel further reveals that, while their patrons were the Rajput Hindus, many of them have converted to Islam.

The Manganhaars, whose inspirations include the Sufi poetry of Mirabai, Bhagat Kabir, Surdas, Bulleh Shah, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Sachal Sarmast and Baba Farid, were an important part of their patron’s lives of their patrons, performing at all important occasions such as childbirth, marriage and death.

By Lakshmi Ajay, "‘Gujarat music mein dooba hua hai’" - The Times Of India - India
Saturday, November 8, 2008

Singer, performer, a lyricist and a music composer, seldom has an artist had such a wide trajectory of success as Kailash Kher

Having stormed the music scene with Allah Ke Bande he managed to capture the collective imagination of music lovers in the country with his famed sufiana style of singing.

Six years later the singer is donning more hats by the day and experimenting with what he knows best about, his music! We caught up with him during his recent trip to the city to perform for the Times Ahmedabad Festival 2008.

Seeming kicked about his first innings as a music producer with friends Naresh and Paresh Kamath in upcoming films like Dasvidanya and Chandni Chowk to China, he says, “I think after Shankar-Jaikishan, there’s a similar talent pool in us. Making music in both films have been interesting. The treatment of each film is so diverse that making music for them was like traversing a wide spectrum.”

Constantly involved in writing lyrics, making music, singing and performing, does the singer want to try his hand at acting as well? “Although I have done appearances in my songs I don’t think I am inclined towards acting. You have to be committed and give lots of time for the same.”

Having been a participant in Mission Ustaad, Kailash returns as a judge on Indian Idol 4 and seems visibly excited, “The contestants that we have chosen from different cities this time are immensely talented. There have been interesting format changes in the show.”

What about the famous face-offs and the war of words between the judges, almost a compulsory thing with most talent based reality shows? “I have come to know Sonali Bendre only during the show but have worked with Anu Malek and Javed saab before. So no chance of ego clashes there. Hum log bade maze se kaam karte hain !” he says.

Having garnered a huge fan following for his band Kailasa’s two albums Kailasa and the recent Kailasa jhoomo , he says, “We have gathered a motley mix of fan following where we have some fans who identify with classical music and some who like rock music.”

With a musical collaboration with DJ Paul Oakenfield in place, he is all set to take sufi music places. “The youth mostly connect with sufi style because these songs have lyrics that speak of values associated with our culture, yet the sound is contemporary. I have observed that there is an instant connect to Sufi music anywhere in the world,” says the singer who also pens his own lyrics.

Performing in Gujarat of course is a pleasure for this soft-spoken singer. “Gujarat music main dooba hua hai. And one thing is for sure that there is lots of khana and gana here that one can indulge in,” he grins.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

The gathering of Senegalese Muslims resembled a west African version of US-style summer camp: dozens of young men and women huddled under tents singing songs to the four-time rhythm of cow-hide drums against an Elysian backdrop of flowering baobab trees.

Answering the call of the "Ndiguel" - the call to work - has become an important fixture for Mourides, a Sufi Islam movement whose doctrine of hard work as a route to paradise has made it a powerful economic and political force in Senegal.

Each year at harvest, thousands of disciples, from bankers to bus drivers, descend upon Khelcom fields, rising at 6am to pick peanuts under a blazing sun. The work is done on behalf of a local marabout - or religious leader - and the proceeds go to support local schools for poor youth.

"I come back here every year to learn humility, to reconnect myself with people in the countryside regardless of their background; it's about solidarity," says Idrissa Lo, a 33-year-old football agent from Dakar.

"Pray as if you will die tomorrow and work as if you will live forever," is one of the oft-quoted teachings of Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, the Muslim mystic who founded Mouridism in 1883 and whose grainy photograph is plastered on walls across the country.

The marabouts' teachings to go out into the world and bring back wealth to build up the movement has led it to establish a formidable trading network across the globe, from street hawkers in Rome, tomato pickers in Spain and import/export dealers in Hong Kong.

Nothing is more illustrative of the marabouts' expanding influence than the extraordinary growth of the holy Mouride city of Touba, a chaotic urban expanse that rises suddenly out of the Sahelian bush.

With 5,000 inhabitants, Touba was just a village at independence from France in 1960. Today, with a population of more than 500,000, it is at the centre of a global network of street traders, merchants and labourers, whose remittances helped build the biggest mosque in sub-Saharan Africa and a $10m hospital nearby.

Such tangible benefits have been a big factor in the Mourides' recruitment success. It is also a factor in the fierce loyalty of their followers. Despite Senegal's impressive growth rate, those subsisting in the city slums have felt little improvement. While secular loyalty toward politicians has plummeted, Sufi marabouts have filled the gap, mitigating the worst effects of state neglect through the provision of schools and social services as well as preaching peace when political tensions run high.

Traditionally, Senegal's marabouts have acted as a force for inter-religious integration with Christian and animist minorities. The country's much revered first president and poet, Leopold Senghor, was Christian and it is not uncommon to have Muslims and Christians within the same family.

More recently, the marabouts' steady accumulation of political influence has attracted controversy, pitting traditionalists who wish to protect what they see as their religious integrity against ambitious politicians eager for votes.
Although ostensibly aloof from politics, in practise Senegal's four main brotherhoods have always vied for electoral influence, but political leaders were careful to avoid taking sides. Since the election of President Abdoulaye Wade in 2000, there is a perception that this has begun to change.

Upon being elected Mr Wade, himself a Mouride, went on a pilgrimage to Touba and publicly knelt before the Mouride caliph (leader). The president said his visit was purely personal but the message was clear: alliances were shifting and secular state politics were a thing of the past. Since then, Mr Wade has openly cultivated the endorsement of the caliph, who appeared on national TV during the 2007 presidential campaign to assert that Mr Wade, if elected, would complete the modernisation of Touba's infrastructure.

When combined with the personalisation of power around Mr Wade, some analysts allege that the caliph's closeness to the presidency casts him as a type of political consultant to the state.
"In a society where there are no clear boundaries between the religious and civic spheres . . . the ties that bind the nation together are becoming ever looser," says Penda Mbow, professor of history at Cheikh Anta Diop university in Dakar and a former minister of culture.

Occasionally, the lines between politics and religion have blurred, with worrying consequences for Senegal's democracy and its guardians. In the run-up to last year's presidential election, followers of one Dakar-based marabout, mostly jobless young men, attacked the convoy of Idrissa Seck, a presidential rival and former prime minister.

Although many Senegalese dismiss suggestions that marabouts are colluding with politicians, a creeping "politicisation" of the brotherhoods is acknowledged by Cheikh Bethio Thioune, one of the country's most respected Sufi leaders.

But supporters say Mr Wade has merely recognised the growing commercial power of the diaspora and the changing aspirations of the young.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Superficiality pervades Islamic discourse in our country. Instead of studying Quran and trying to elicit from it solutions for the real problems we face (in which case it would have plenty to say), we worry about certain cultural expressions and how it can harm our faith despite the egalitarian and pluralistic nature of Quranic thought.

The latest fatwa from the National Fatwa council is one which shows a lack of sensitivity and a lack of information.The lack of sensitivity comes from how they talk about yoga and Hinduism as being such horrible things to do and be. While the notion of polytheism is aberrant in Islam, many Hindus in my experience actually use their theology simply as representation and at the end of the day, believe in Atman, the great soul whom they identify as God.

And even if they didn’t, do we have the right to speak about them in such a derogatory manner? Could the fatwa council not have included a statement saying that this fatwa is simply an opinion and is not meant to be a derogation to hindus? What arrogance prevents them from saying so? The lack of information is evident in their wording that yoga contains ‘physical elements, worshipping and chanting’. Physical elements we know but what is this ‘worshipping’ and ‘chanting’? Are they talking about the asanas, the physical postures in yoga? There are postures which resemble the Islamic prostration, are those haram as well? What of the headstand posture, how is that an act of worhip?

And what of the chants or mantras? Why are those a problem? The mantra ‘aum mani padme hum’ has a deep etymological significance. Each syllable is meant to purify our being from bad things such as pride, jealousy, avarice, passion, ignorance and aggression. Isn’t this a good thing, purification?

Quran says in chapter 91, verse 9 that the soul which is successful is one which purifies itself.

Each syllable in ‘aum mani padme hum’ also signifies qualities of God such as wisdom, compassion, quality of being and equanimity. What is so unislamic about these qualities? If we looked through Quran, we will find that these qualities are repeated in Quran itself. This is why Quran calls itself ‘muhayminan alaihi’, that is a guardian over it, it being all ideologies before it. It was never meant to be the sole of source of truth but rather its criteria.The only difference between the Islamic and Yoga expressions are the cultures from which they originate.

The national fatwa council has taken upon itself to equivocate Arabic expressions of piety and worship with Islam itself. What if Mohamed was born in India? Would God have not commanded him to appropriate existing rituals albeit without the physical representations of God? Muslims may be praying in Sanskrit today if that was the case.

I wonder how the national fatwa council would see things then. And what about the sufi practises? Where does the council think they came from? The sufi dancing rituals for example were not Arab-originated yet they are seen to be more glamorous face of Sufism and and again there is nothing wrong with that.

We live in a pluralistic world alongside people of different cultural origins and expressions. If we expect them to understand us, then we must first seek to understand them and not to judge them in such a narrow and culturally chauvinistic way.

Islam is wider that the National Fatwa Council makes it out to be. If we read Quran, we will find it to be extremely unworried about how one expresses one’s devotion to God. Rather, it concerns itself with our ethics and how we treat others. Muslims need to realign themselves to this mindset.

Even in its eighth year, the annual sufi and mystic music festival, Ruhaniyat, is as soulful and impressive as ever. The festival, which has brought an impressive line-up of over 2000 Sufi musicians to the city over the last seven years, is all set to enthrall the city once again.

Organised by Banyan Tree Events — who also host the Banganga music festival every year —the two day festival began on Friday at Horniman Circle. The festival, which aims at showcasing the larger genre of Mystic music, brings together motley of mystic musicians — from Shabad singers to Baul music from West Bengal.

The festival will be held in seven cities this year — Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune. The highlight in Mumbai will be Sheikh Yasin Al Tohamy and his group from Egypt who will be performing Arabic Sufi songs and Latif Bolat from Turkey who will be singing Bektashi Sufiana songs.

Also performing in Mumbai will be Baithi Dhamaal and Malunga songs by the Siddhi-Goma Group from Africa; Sufi Kalam and mystic songs by Sawan Khan, Akhe Khan and Sali Muhammad from Rajasthan; Baul songs by Parvathy Baul from West Bengal, Mystic Shabads by Dev Dildaar from Punjab; and Sufi Qawaali by the Warasi Brothers and Group from Hyderabad.

Nazeer Warasi of the Warasi Brothers has been witness to the festival growing to its current popular status. “We performed in the very first Ruhaniyat. We are very happy with the platform it provides for Sufi music; it is one of a kind and we wanted to take it forward,” he said, adding, “We’re very happy to see how much it has grown.”

Anand Lalwani, Senior Manager of Public Relations at Banyan Tree Events, said, “The audience for this festival has grown since we first started. And we’ve also had more international artists over the years. Last year, the highlight was a group of Turkish dervishes and this year’s highlight, Latif Bolat, had performed in the previous festival as well. The Egyptian group, which is our other highlight, is performing here for the first time.” He added, “For the next year, we’re trying to get a Syrian group.”

For the artists, the name of the festival — Ruhaniyat — says it all. “‘Ruh’ has to do with healing the soul,” said Warasi, “and we are the doctors of that. If more people come and listen to this music, they’ll get peace of mind.”

Lahore: The Mystic Night at the World Performing Arts Festival “mystified” the audience as they celebrated the tunes of the legendary Sufi poets at the Alhamra Open Air Theatre.

Featuring such legendary figures as Iqbal Bahoo and Sain Zahoor, the star attraction proved to be Abida Parveen, whose charisma captivated the audience from her first to her last song.

The first open air concert to be completely sold out, the night attracted the largest crowd of the festival this year, as people braved the chilly weather to enjoy the warmth of the mystic performances.

Dressed in black with ajrak on her shoulders, Abida was welcomed on stage by thunderous applause from the waiting crowd. Starting with Haiderium Qalandarum Mastum, the singer engaged the audience with her voice immediately. She continued the momentum with her renditions of several ghazals and other mystic kalam. People swayed with the rhythm of her performance and many gave her a standing ovation to show their appreciation for her music.

Requests
The show organisers had taken the varying tastes of their performers into consideration and the stage lighting was changed between each performance to suit the theme of what was being sung. During Abida’s performance, people were encouraged to shout out requests.

Abida did not disappoint, as she took the sur on high notes and then skillfully brought them to the low notes. When she was singing in low notes, a pin-drop silence prevailed and her talent captivated the audience.

The vast majority of the people watching the performance were youths but there were several elderly and middle-aged people present as well. The elderly had brought cushions with them to enjoy the night properly as the stone stairs that served as the seating were very hard and cold.

Show-stopperEarlier, the organisers had announced that Abida’s performance would be followed by another singer but most of the crowd dispersed after she left the stage and there was no finale.

Omer Khan, a viewer, said that the enthusiasm of the Mystic Night had relieved him of his worries and tensions. He said that the city had rare moments of such scaled cultural activity, adding that such events could really promote the soft image of the country.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

By Peter Steinfels, "Reviving a Novel-Worthy Tale of War and Religion" - The New York Times - New York, NY
Friday, November 21, 2008

For more than 40 years he was a world figure, his renown stretching from the American Midwest to Moscow to the Middle East. As he neared death in 1883, The New York Times wrote that he “deserves to be ranked among the foremost of the few great men of the century.”

Earlier, he had received accolades and awards from France, Britain, Russia, the Ottoman sultan, the papacy and President Abraham Lincoln, who sent him not a medal but, in quintessentially American fashion, a matched pair of fancy Colt pistols.

The man being honored was Abd el-Kader, a learned and fervent Muslim, who for 15 years had organized and led a jihad against a Western power.

After he ceased hostilities, his four-year detention, in violation of a promise of safe passage into exile, became an international cause célèbre. Released and feted, even by his captors, he came to live in Damascus. There, in July 1860, el-Kader braved mobs and saved thousands of Christians from a murderous rampage through the city’s Christian quarter.

In this, the bicentennial of his birth, el-Kader’s name is known to only a tiny fraction of Americans. That fraction includes those knowledgeable about modern Algeria, where his resistance to French colonization places him among the founding figures of an independent nation.

And then there are the 1,500 residents of Elkader, a town in northeastern Iowa, founded and named in 1846 by a frontier lawyer who admired the freedom-fighting exploits of this “daring Arab chieftain.”

Anyone interested in learning more should turn to “Commander of the Faithful” (Monkfish Book Publishing Company), a new book by John W. Kiser.

Mr. Kiser had previously written “The Monks of Tibhirine” (St. Martin’s Press), about Trappist monks in Algeria whose quiet lives of prayer had bonded them with their Muslim neighbors but who were nonetheless taken hostage by Islamic extremists in 1996 and killed.

Mr. Kiser learned about el-Kader (the name is sometimes transliterated from the Arabic in different ways, like al-Qadir or al-Kadir) because the Tibhirine monastery stood on the slope of a mountain where el-Kader had led one of his battles and where a steep cliff face was named after him.

A book about a leader of jihad may seem like a strange sequel to a book about peaceful monks, but the more Mr. Kiser learned about el-Kader, the more he felt a spiritual kinship between the devout, ascetic Trappists and the pious, ascetic guerrilla leader. Both had found in their own religious codes and daily rituals the basis for a fraternity that defied religious boundaries.

As the son of a celebrated holy man, tribal leader and head of a Sufi brotherhood, el-Kader was taught to read and memorize the Koran, tutored in all the details of the tradition but also in philosophy, history and other fields.

At home and away, the young boy was also trained in horseback riding, public speaking and fighting skills. All would prove crucial. In 1832, with France increasingly encroaching on Algerian territory that was only nominally under Ottoman rule, the 25-year-old el-Kader emerged as the commander, the emir, of Muslim Arab resistance.

Because el-Kader was just over five feet tall, Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker, who took a great interest in Algerian affairs, called him a “puny Arab”; but Tocqueville also called him “a Muslim Cromwell.” Like Oliver Cromwell, he wielded strict religious beliefs to form a disciplined fighting force.

Mr. Kiser insists on the religious dimension of what might otherwise be read as a story of military and political maneuvering. But “Commander of the Faithful” is hardly a theological study. It is a dramatic story of quarreling tribes, of Sufi sects and brotherhoods, of treacherous Ottoman officials, rival French generals, secret negotiations, broken truces, terrible atrocities and new forms of insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare.

Any number of episodes could inspire novels, like the deep spiritual intimacy that joined the embattled emir and Antoine-Adolphe Dupuch, Roman Catholic bishop of Algiers.
It began in 1841 with the emir’s offer of a prisoner exchange, a humanitarian contrast to the scorched-earth policy being executed by French troops. A decade later, when el-Kader, with his family and entourage, was being held in confinement in France, Bishop Dupuch became a tireless champion of his liberation.

At the end of 1847, el-Kader decided that God did not want any more blood spilled in what had come to be a futile struggle. The emir agreed to lay down arms and expected French officials to honor their promise of exile in the Middle East.

In France, however, the reign of Louis-Philippe was tottering, and he feared public opinion. When the French ship transporting the Algerians arrived in Toulon, they were put under guard.
Little more than a month later, the Revolution of 1848 broke out, and politicians grew even more fearful of stirring public outrage at the idea of freeing the Algerian enemy. It took four years before the mood changed, and Louis Napoleon had the confidence to free the prisoner.

Mr. Kiser does not make undue claims for his book. He had ready access to sources in French and English but not Arabic ones, although he found plenty of guidance in Algeria and Damascus.
As it happens, a major source for the life of el-Kader, in any language, is the work of an eccentric Englishman, Charles Henry Churchill of, yes, those Churchills, who lived in Damascus and sympathized with the Muslim Arab subjects of Ottoman rule. For months throughout the winter of 1859-60, Churchill interviewed the emir daily and published the account in 1869.

Mr. Kiser has provided a “Chronology of Algerian and World Events” that provocatively reminds American readers that while France was launching its military campaigns against Algerian guerrillas the United States was sending troops to quell Native Americans.

But it is hard to read “Commander of the Faithful” without thinking of more recent events — and the author knows this well. Perhaps, he said in a phone conversation, the book might help people “to find in France’s adventure and its ultimate failure some lessons about the world we’re entering today”.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

By Mohammed Wajihuddin /TNN, "'Sufism can be a balm for the pain caused by terrorists'" - The Times Of India - Mumbai, India
Saturday, November 22, 2008

Mumbai: He likens music to a knife-it's up to us how we use it. "A knife can be used to cut an apple and also to slit somebody's throat,'' laughs Yasine El-Tohami, one of the Arab world's most popular Sufi singer-musicians.

El-Tohami is part of ‘Ruhaniyat'-the two-day (November 23-24) annual Sufi-mystic music festival at Horniman Circle Garden at Fort.

El-Tohami and his group belt out the soothing Sufi tunes in these times of terror. "Sufism can be a balm for the wounds and pain caused by terrorists,'' explains the 59-year-old El-Tohami, sitting at a south Mumbai hotel room. Though he doesn't specify any particular Indian mystic gurus as his inspiration, the globe-trotting El-Tohami says visiting India "is a spiritual journey''.

Coming from Assyout, 400 km from south of Cairo (Egypt), El-Tohami says he is influenced by several Arab Sufi giants, including Ibn Arabi, Al-Hallaj and Omar Ibnul Farid.
Accompanied by musicians on instruments like oudh, trumpet, flute and drums, the singer creates haunting tunes.

Interestingly, El-Tohami was educated at Al-Azhar University, Islamic world's most famous seminary which supports an orthodox interpretation of Islam. Before he could go deep into the academic aspect of Islam, El-Tohami felt pulled by the invisible forces of spiritualism and mysticism. Sufism, which considers music an integral part of path to reach the divine, is a taboo in orthodox Islam and most ulema preach a distancing from it.

But Sufism, claims El-Tohami, is not divisive. "Its message is inclusive and goes beyond the barriers of religions and nationalities,'' says the singer.

Coming from a country which produced Umm Kulsum (1904-1975), Arab world's most famous singer-writer, El-Tohami regrets he never met the much-adored singer who had influenced a generation of singers, including Bob Dylan and Maria Callas.

"I grew up listening to Umm Kulsum. I was supposed to meet her the day she died in Cairo. Her matchless voice still rings in my ears,'' raves El-Tohami whose father was also a Sufi-saint in his own right.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Bangalore: An American citizen and visiting professor at a city college was killed on Saturday evening after being hit by a BMTC bus while he was cycling near Ramohalli Gate on Bangalore-Mysore Road.

Brent Hurd (38) was a Fulbright scholar and visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media, Kumbalgodu. Hurd was cycling home after visiting a club on Mysore Road at 7 pm for a round of swimming. Though he was rushed to hospital, he was declared dead on arrival.

A traveller and documentary film-maker, Hurd joined IIJNM in July for a one-year appointment to teach video journalism and documentary. Before that, he taught a summer semester graduate class at American University, Washington DC. During 2007 and 2008, he worked eight months in Azerbaijan as a Fulbright scholar, lecturing at Baku State University.

According to Kanchan Kaur, vice-dean of IIJNM, Hurd's first loves were reporting and filming, both of which he did prolifically. His travels matched his love for exotic stories.

"I have walked the streets of southern Thailand covering religious conflict, canvassed the Medina of Tunis assessing women's rights and studied geysers to understand geothermal technology in Iceland,'' Hurd had written on his website.

Hurd was a Peace Corps volunteer in Plovdiv, Bulgaria; a European tour guide; an adjunct English professor and helped negotiate contracts for construction of the International Space Station. Then he turned to journalism as a writer with the Voice of America. He went on to serve as a news analysis reporter for five years. Among the luminaries he covered are the Dalai Lama and former US presidential candidate Gary Hart.

Hurd had an enduring interest in describing the role of Islam in the modern world, an assignment he took on after the 9/11 attacks as way to explain the religion to shell-shocked Americans.

While on the 2007-2008 Fulbright scholarship in Baku, he produced a documentary, `A Return to Islam'.

At the time of death, he was working on another documentary about Sufism, the mystical side of Islam.

Hurd is survived by his parents, brother and two sisters. After the memorial service at IIJNM on Monday at 11.30 am, his body will be flown to the United States.

But in the city's rapid expansion and growing traffic volume on the stretch from Dilli Darwaja to Shahibaug, the age-old dargah now eats much of pedestrian space and comes as a hindrance in the smooth flow of traffic during busy traffic hours.

One of the local residents, Mushtaq Mohammad Sheikh, 45, says, "My forefathers have lived here under Pir Baba's benediction for long. We keep on hearing about his miraculous powers through our grandparents."

"Razing and shifting the dargah from its position is not an answer to growing traffic problem. Encroachers and street vendors should be managed well to ease the traffic situation here."

Lahore: Whole life is a learning process and search for knowledge continuous throughout the life, said Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.

He was addressing a ceremony at the Forman Christian College University here on Saturday.

"Islam is the religion of peace; it spread through peace and efforts of Sufi saints and not through sword," the governor said.

He advised the students to work hard for the progress of the Pakistan. He also said that now there were a number of new fields and professions for students in science and management.

He thanked the faculty members from abroad for serving Pakistan and said that they should feel in Pakistan as they are in home.

Speaking on the occasion, Rector of the FCU Professor Dr Peter H Arm said: "We are establishing new departments and focusing on infrastructure development to make the university an internationally recognized institution.

Earlier, the Punjab governor distributed prizes among the university graduates.

Monday, November 24, 2008

By AA, "Turkey sends Mevlana's book to worldwide known people" - World Bulletin - Istanbul, Turkey
Friday, November 21, 2008

The Masnavi or Masnavi-I Ma'navi written by Mevlana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism.

Turkey sent great Anatolian philosopher's work to some worldwide known people, a local executive said on Friday.

Tahir Akyurek, the mayor of the central Anatolian province of Konya, said that the municipality had sent Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi's book "Masnavi" to some internationally-known people. "Among them are Pope Benedict XVI, Queen Sofia of Spain, Prince Charles of Wales, and German coach Christoph Daum," Akyurek told AA correspondent.

Akyurek enumerated Vural Oger, a member of the European Parliament; Cem Ozdemir, the co-chairman of the German Green Party; Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, and Swiss President Pascal Couchepin among people to whom the municipality had sent the Masnavi.

The Masnavi, written in Persian, was translated and published in 14 languages including Turkish, English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Arabic, Japan, Albanian, and Swedish, Uzbek, Turkmen and Urdu languages. The mayor said that the book would also be published in several other languages and send to those countries.

Mevlana was born on September 30, 1207 in Balkh in present day Afghanistan. He died in Konya on December 17, 1273. He was laid to eternal rest beside his father and over his remains in a splendid shrine that was erected in Konya.

Mevlana devoted himself to the pursuit of Sufi mysticism, in which he was justly regarded as the supreme master. He was the spiritual founder of the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes.

"Come, come again, whoever you are, come! Heathen, fire worshipper or idolatrous, come! Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times. Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are," is his famous motto that has been seen as a symbol of tolerance and love for centuries.

The Masnavi or Masnavi-I Ma'navi, written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi is one of the best known and most influential works of both Sufism and Persian literature. Comprising six books of poems that amount to more than 50,000 lines, it pursues its way through 424 stories that illustrate man's predicament in his search for God.

London: Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art presents the first solo exhibition of paintings and works on paper by the Persian born artist Y.Z. Kami, titled Endless Prayers.

This group of works has been created over the past ten years and will be shown for the first time in the UK.

The most striking works in this exhibition are undoubtedly Y.Z. Kami's large and frontal painted portraits of ordinary people, each of whom entirely fills the canvas, often measuring three metres by two metres. Despite their imposing size and intense presence, these portraits are neither flattering nor psychological; rather, they depict the subjects as they are, absorbed in their own world.

This characteristic together with their fresco-like quality, executed using a special painting technique, endows the figures with a certain lack of materiality resembling the Fayum portraits which were painted to accompany Egyptian mummies in their graves.

In some of the paintings the eyes of the subjects are closed, but in others they are open and they gaze either inwardly or at a fixed point in the distance. In most cases it is difficult to establish eye contact and each painted figure seems to carry its own distinct history within itself.

The same frontality and detachment is prevalent in Y.Z. Kami's monumental photographs of Islamic sites and architecture. For Y.Z. Kami, architecture, like human beings, speaks of its own history and at times he combines architecture with portraits of people to create some poignant works, such as Dry Land, 1994-2004 and Konya, 2007.

The exhibition will also feature Y.Z. Kami's works on paper, entitled Endless Prayers. These works are made by gluing countless minute brick-shaped cut-outs from poetry and prayer texts on to the canvas often in circular arrangements, but also according to some Islamic architectural detailing of domes.

The circular and spiralling patterns are inspired by the whirling motions in the rituals of dervishes found in the Mawlavi order of Sufism, who profess that the act of spinning undoes the ego, cleanses them of the self and finds the sole unity of God.

The Mawlavi order of Sufism was founded by the thirteenth century Persian poet, Rumi, whose work has played an important role in Y.Z. Kami's life and work since he began studying it as a young man. The work entitled Konya, 2007, was made in homage to the poet and bears the name of the town where Rumi spent his last years of life, died and has today his mausoleum.

Y.Z. Kami was born in 1956 in Tehran, Iran, and now lives and works in New York.

Ruhaniyat 2008 will introduce the city to Turkish and Egyptian versions of Sufi music

To a generation hooked on to the hybrid Sufi strains that abound Bollywood today, Latif Bolat’s brand of music might be a little surprising, unexpected even.

Because the Turkish singer hardly deviates from the ancient mystic discipline of Betakshi Sufiana, a venerated Turkish classic. However, redemption is close at hand, as Bolat’s strains of Sufiana are all set to waft into the city, this month.

The eighth edition of Ruhaniyat, which travels to the city, for the second time, has roped in several stalwarts of music and mysticism who otherwise are quite lost on the humdrum of urban pursuits.

“Most of these artistes are very rooted in the rural traditions. In fact villages are the seats of Sufi music. We have tried to familiarise them with an urban audience and vice versa,” says Manoj Babu, creative director of Banyan Tree Events, which has been organising Ruhaniyat.

In fact, Ruhaniyat was started with the motive to revive Sufi music in the cities which were being misled by the watered down, remixed popular versions. So from bauls to qawwalis, and from Turkey to Egypt, Ruhaniyat has handpicked the most interesting performers from the several genres of Sufi music.

Apart from the staple Sufi Kalam compositions to be performed by a group from Rajasthan, Kolkata will be treated to Jagar by artistes from Uttaranchal. Jagar usually revolves around penance and is performed during the nights. Local ballads and references to epics comprise this form which increases in tempo in course of the performance and reaches a feverish pitch, which culminates in frenzied dance movements.

“It is believed that Jagar was traditionally performed to invoke the spirit of a dead in a living person’s body,” says a representative of Banyan Tree Events.

Bolat and Arabic Sufi performer Mohammad Farghaly from Egypt are the star attractions of Ruhaniyat this year.

“While Bolat sticks to ancient Turkish mysticism, he also relates the same with contemporary society and politics,” says Babu. Bolat, now based in the US, is known to create an intimate atmosphere embarking on a storytelling process explaining the sociopolitical elements of Turkish folk traditions.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Known for his many works as a film maker and a designer, Muzaffar Ali is now ready to edit a spiritual magazine

When the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Indo-Swiss Friendship Treaty took off in Jaipur last week, amidst a strong presence of both Indian and Swiss delegates, film-maker and designer Muzaffar Ali seemed to represent the Indian intelligentsia.

Ali in his trademark style – sporting his white flowing hair and a smart black outfit, turned up for the pre-launch of the event, and even before anyone had, had the chance to chat with him, he had disappeared.

He had apparently gone to pray at the dargah in Ajmer. “I told myself, no matter how short my visit is this time, I will definitely visit the dargah,” said Ali, as he spoke to us on the phone on his way back from Ajmer.

His religious visit over, he was ready to talk about things spiritual. “I am coming up with a magazine called Who which is a spiritual magazine with Sufism as its principle,” shares the maverick director, credited to have made the hugely famous Umrao Jaan in 1981.

And it’s this magazine that brought him to Jaipur. He wanted to share the concept of the magazine with the people of the Pink City. “I know Jaipur as a very cultural city where people still are some what in touch with their history. The response was good and they were really interested in knowing more and more about the magazine,” says Ali adding, “I have been here many times in the past and get that peace that people usually hunt for in metropolitan cities like Delhi. It is good to find people here who are comparatively relaxed and have time for each other.”

So, he is fond of Jaipur, as he is of history. And his next two projects will be based on historical stories, and at least one will be shot in Jaipur.

“Of the two stories, one is based on the life of a Rumi poet and the other on Noorjahan and Jahangir,” he reveals. And while one has heard of Ali crossing the border to Pakistan in search of the cast for his movie, for locations, his hunt has brought him to Jaipur.

“Though it will be too early to predict anything, but I am planning to shoot most parts of the film on Noorjahan and Jahangir in Jaipur and use the heritage and craft of the city. I also will try to use the craftsmen from Jaipur in my movie,” he adds.

The Padma Shri awardee has been known as a filmmaker who has introduced the audience to various subjects and has never used cinema solely as a medium of entertainment. Is that intentional, we ask.

“We need to learn that movies are not just about entertainment, at least I don’t take movies that way. I think it is a vast arena and so interesting that the more you try to go deep into it, the more you get involved. There is so much to be explored about film making. When I think of film making, I think I still have a long way to go,” he says, his tone almost confessional.

Coming back to his films, we ask, why he has chosen two historical subjects this time around, and even before the question is complete, he says, “Because history fascinates me. There is so much for people to know about in history. In future too, I might just be making films based on history because it’s my passion”.

"Ahmedabad Heritage Centre(AHC) is coordinating this whole noble initiative which will feature special walks, street theatre, festivals and workshops, art exhibitions, film shows, house museums and display of collections," added Nayak.

Also a Sufi festival which will be part of the celebration will be organised on November 21 at Sarkhej Roza, Sarkhej.

Sheikha Khadija Radin, who is a senior teacher in the Mevlevi Order of America and the Sufi Ruhaniat International, will be perfoming the practice of whirling during the festival.

Khadija has pioneered the integration of whirling with Western movement to create a mesmerising and graceful mode of spiritual practice.

[Picture: Sheikha Khadija turning, 1982. Photo from the Mevlevi Order of America website. Click http://www.whirlingdervish.org/index.htm also for Sheikha Khadija's full program (18-23) in Ahmedabad and Mumbai.].

Islamabad: New awards for folk literature and children literature will be introduced if reasonable books on the subject are published every year, said Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) Chairman Fakhar Zaman on Friday during a meeting with the academy’s resident directors (RDs).

The meeting decided that the PAL Life Fellowship would be conferred on senior authors known for their progressive and enlightened writings.

The chairman directed the RDs to hold two seminars on literature, history, philosophy and sociology a month in their respective region.

In this regard, first seminar will be held on the topic “Fall of Capitalism” and the second one on “Historical Prospectus of Sufism”.

The meeting decided that the RDs would undertake an assignment for compilation of History of Pakistani literature.

Literary calendarZaman appreciated a proposal for printing of a literary calendar containing a brief note on life, sketches and selection from leading poets. Twenty-four sufi poets of Pakistan will be featured in this calendar that will be compiled by the PAL in co-ordination with its RDs.

“The PAL will request the prime minister to earmark funds for it and upgrade its provincial offices set up in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta,” Zaman said.

During the meeting, it was also decided that Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi and Quetta-based offices of the academy would hold writers’ conference in February, March, April and May next year respectively.

Vice Chancellor, University of Jammu Professor Amitabh Mattoo on Friday said that the cultural heritage of Jammu and Kashmir cuts across all the regional, religious and ethnic barriers.

"Three regions (Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh) may apparently look different keeping in view the geographical factors, but they have so much in common, acquired through age old association amongst the people of the State that it will be a stupendous task to isolate them culturally and politically," said Professor Amitabh Mattoo who was delivering presidential address during the release of a Newsletter "Thati" and Website of the Centre for studies in Museology and Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani Museum of Heritage University of Jammu here this morning in General Zorawar Singh Auditorium.

Director General of Police Kuldeep Khuda was chief guest of the function. Professor Amitabh Mattoo said that University of Jammu's remarkable features reflects tradition of Jammu region and General Zorawer Singh Auditorium reflects Cultural heritage of all the three regions of the state.

"A treasure house showcasing the Sufi tradition of the Kashmir valley, the Duggar ethos of the Jammu region and Ladakh's Lama culture has been set up in the Jammu University, General Zorawer Singh Auditorium itself speak the rich cultural and ethnic bond of Jammu and Kashmir State," Professor Amitabh Mattoo said adding that it is a gift of Jammu University to the brave Dogras for showcasing the treasures that represent the culture, ethos, paintings, history, heritage and art besides old manuscripts of Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Amitabh Mattoo said that University of Jammu give a glimpse of history through pictures and artifacts, "The art gallery is named after scholar and translator Lotsava Richen Bzangoo (958-1055 AD) -- the great Buddhist saint of ladakh --, houses classical pieces of art and artefacts of Ladakh, including oil paintings and wooden and stone sculptures by renowned artists," Professor Amitabh Mattoo said adding that the Nund Reshi museum, named after Kashmiri Sufi saint Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani, depicts not only traditions but inter-cultural aspects that have been the hallmark of the Sufi tradition.

Professor Mattoo further said that the contribution of the scholars of this State to Sanskrit literature has simply been remarkable. Names of Pt. Kalhana, Bilhan, Mammat, Abhinav Gupta and many others have gone down as legends in the history of scholarship.

"Today the greatest need for scholars and artistes of the State is to rise to the occasion and play an important role in maintaining and preserving our national integration and cultural heritage so that we come out of this temporary phase of turbulence and uncertainty to emerge stronger in future because divisions on the basis of religion, region or language or caste has not been our tradition. Such aberration and estrangement of our people from the national mainstream is to be resisted strongly," added Professor Amitabh Mattoo.

Director General of Police Kuldeep Khuda while speaking on the occasion said that the people of Jammu and Kashmir should be proud of Cultural heritage of the state as the J&K state is traditionally rich and this land has given birth to the renowned Sofi's and Saints.

"The renowned Sofi Sheikh Noor-Ud-Din Norrani who was the most secular person, worked for peace and humanity throughout his life," said Kuldeep Khuda. He said that the State has a unique distinction of being a place where people from all walks of life and from all across the world have been coming to seek peace, knowledge and spiritual enlightenment.

"Kashmir which has traditionally been called the place of saints, has remained a seat of learning for years together," he said adding that unfortunately, during the recent past we have been witnessing a spurt of violence and intolerance where all human values have been thrown to the winds and unprecedented levels of crime, cruelty and outrage of humankind have been let loose.

While appreciating the role played by Professor Amitabh Mattoo as Vice Chancellor, University of Jammu, Kuldeep Khuda said that the way Prof. Amitabh Mattoo is leading the University of Jammu for the last six year; the Varsity has emerged as the leading educational hub of the world. "It was the leadership of Prof. Amitabh Mattoo that University of Jammu has emerged globally in all the fields. We wish success to Prof. Amitabh Mattoo in near future but we the people of the state expects that in future also he will work for the Jammu University to add more and more feathers to its cap," he added.

Earlier in the welcome address, Prof. Poonam Chowdhary, Director Centre for studies in Museology and Sheikh Noor-ud-Din Noorani Musium of Heritage University of Jammu said that way back in 2004, Prof. Amitabh Mattoo decided to name the Museum of Heritage after the name of Sufi Saint, Noor-Ud-Din Noorani, who is considered to be the best representative of the composite culture of the state.

Speaking on the occasion, district nazim said Sufi saint Qadir Bux Bedal taught the lesson of love and brotherhood. He directed the authorities concerned to complete the project of mazar auditorium within stipulated time. He also announced a grant of Rs100,000 for the publication of books of Faqir Qadir Bux Bedil and arrangements of the Urs.

The Urs celebration would continue for three days. On Saturday, the last day of the Urs, Mushira and Adbi Conference would be held. Sindh Minister for Culture Sassi Palejo will be the chief guest on the occasion.

The setting was perfect for the task at hand -- the pristine, alpine grounds of the Aspen Institute, freshly dusted with a coating of snow, in the offseason quiet of Aspen, Colo.

More than 150 religious leaders from diverse traditions -- monastic Christian, Sufi Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Native American and others -- gathered last week in the Colorado ski town to try to figure out how best to speak with one voice on the issue of peace (and justice), and how to encourage President-elect Barack Obama to make compassionate decisions in his new administration.

It's at once a simple and ambitious task. Often in an interfaith (as it's commonly called) crowd such as this, finding common ground -- or even a common vocabulary -- can be a challenge in and of itself. But that wasn't a hurdle at the Global Peace Initiative of Women's "Gathering Spiritual Voices of America," where I was invited both to observe and participate in setting an agenda for compassionate, contemplative social action.

There was a remarkable level of cohesion among the august cohort of religious leaders assembled in Aspen, that included the Rev. Thomas Keating, a Catholic monk and founder of the Centering Prayer movement; Joan Brown Campbell, former head of the National Council of Churches; Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Salomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement; Kenneth Frost, spiritual leader of the Ute Nation; Swami Atmarupananda, the senior monastic at the Ramakrishna Mission; the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, chairman of the American Buddhist Association; Lama Surya Das, Sister Joan Chittister, and the president of Naropa University in Boulder (the first Buddhist-based institute of higher education in the nation.)

The conference was purposely scheduled to begin just two days after the presidential election, and the first slice of common ground that was blatantly evident was an unfettered elation at Obama's election.

Most participants spoke lovingly of Obama -- with a sort of spiritual reverence -- the man upon whom they've rested immense hope for the rebirth (spiritually and otherwise) of the nation and the ushering in of a more peaceable, healthy world.

"The national soul is now asserting and coming forward and choosing to serve humanity," said Sraddhalu Ranade, an educator and scientist from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India.

" 'Blessing' Obama took the mantle, stood to his feet, and said, 'Yes,' " said the Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, founding director of the Aspen Wisdom School, calling the president-elect by the English translation of his Arabic first name. "We get a sense of what a human being is when we stand up and become one of the responsible ones. And it was beautiful. But he can't stand up alone."

Obama's election was, for many of the leaders present, an indication not only of a shift in political power, but of spiritual power as well. Among the issues the leaders agreed were most pressing -- the economy, the environment, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, global poverty -- as the president-elect looks toward setting his agenda for the all-important first 100 days of his administration, was helping the nation heal from what many said was eight years of fear-mongering.

Some called Obama a prophet. Others spoke of him almost as a savior. But as the conference wore on, cooler heads prevailed. "This transformation is not about Barack Obama, it's about us," Brown Campbell said on the last day of the five-day conference. "We make heroes of people too quickly and . . . rest the responsibility on his shoulders [alone]. He's always said 'us.' Every time it's pointed to him he's said, 'No. It's all of us.' "

A Chicago industrialist named Walter Paepcke founded the Aspen Institute, which hosted the peace conference, in the 1950s to be a place where "the human spirit can flourish." He ended up transforming the tiny mining town into a haven for artists, thinkers and leaders from all over the world. Paepcke, reportedly inspired by the Great Books program at the University of Chicago, began the intellectual endeavor that eventually became the Aspen Institute in 1949, by hosting an international celebration for the 200th birthday of the German poet Johann Wolfgang van Goethe.

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home," Goethe said.

While the conference ended without a final document outlining agenda points and spiritual marching orders for the new president-elect -- leaders are crafting a letter for Obama and hope to deliver it to him in the New Year -- it concluded on a note of profound unity.

The assembled ministers, imams, swamis, yogis, rabbis, healers, and just plain faithful, prayed together many times during the conference. For Obama. For President Bush. For, as one woman put it, "the karmic knot to be untied."

On Sunday afternoon, before they scattered to the four winds, the spiritual leaders held hands in three concentric circles for a Sufi zikr -- a prayer ritual. They chanted praise to God, asked for blessings of peace, and concluded by singing the Christian hymn "Amazing Grace" over and over again while dancing a simple side step.

"I once was lost, but now am found," they sang, "was blind but now I see."
It was both a prayer and a declaration of faith.

And it was also a hope, that we all -- including our elected leaders -- might work for peace and act with compassion and grace.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

DVD Reviews: Another visual feast this week is Ron Fricke's restored 1992 film Baraka, its title a Sufi term translating as 'blessing' or 'breath of life'.

With its achingly beautiful visuals and hypnotic soundtrack by the likes of Michael Stearns and Dead Can Dance fusing to create a ravishing poem to the planet and mankind's relationship to it, this feels like both.

Fricke was the director of photography on Koyaanisqatsi and this transcendental, uplifting experience sits admirably alongside it as breathtaking footage from 24 global locations weaves majestic panoramas of deserts, mountain ranges and rainforests into exotic wildlife and human society in all its diversity, from time-lapse shots of hurried commuters to Balinese singers performing the Kecak monkey chant, tranquil mystics and exotic shamen.

Baraka is an overwhelmingly rich experience which grows steadily more hypnotic as it progresses, saying much about planet Earth without uttering a word. Simply magnificent.

Extras in this two-disc set include the documentary Baraka - A Closer Look and a feature on the painstaking restoration process.

By John Wendle, "Tajik Songs of Sky And Destiny at Fest" - The Moscow Times - Moscow, Russia
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Over the next few days, the sounds of the deep south of Tajikistan, the plains of Mongolia and the mountains of Kyrgyzstan will be heard around Moscow as part of the Rozamira festival.

The festival, a mix of art and music, aims to bring cultures closer to each other and will finish with a performance by one of Tajikistan's most famous singers, Dawlatmand Kholov, with the music he brought down from the mountains and has sung around the world -- former French President Jacques Chirac is said to be a fan.

Kholov comes from the southern Tajik city of Kulyab, a small city in a green mountain valley closer to the arid border of Afghanistan than to the relative bustle of Dushanbe.

It was through Afghanistan that Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, reached his high mountain valley.

The group plays the traditional instruments of their mountainous region in a song form known as falak, which translates as "vault of the sky" or "destiny." Falak songs usually talk of separation or despair and are often addressed to the sky.

Falak "is the voice of the people in the mountains crying out to God and to the heavens to hear them. It is their misery and their delight at how the heavens have treated them," writes Mehdi Jami, the maker of the documentary "Meeting Dawlatmand and Whirling Tajik Dancers" about the musician, on the film's web site*.

Kholov, who leads his five sons in the ensemble as well as 10 other musicians, is also one of the leading musicians inspired by Sufism.

"It is hard not to feel the depth of the Sufi traditions and ... the deep philosophical mysticism of the music," said Yaroslava Ziva-Chernova, a spokeswoman for Rozamira. "This is very traditional Tajik music."

Besides the well-known sitar, the group plays more exotic instruments such as the konun -- an ancient stringed instrument -- the rubab, the labchang, the saz -- a lute-like instrument -- as well as the khidzhak, an instrument typical of Tajikistan that resembles a violin. In short, the instruments are as diverse as the dialects of Farsi found in the high mountain valleys of the Pamirs.

The ensemble also plays the daf, a goat-skin frame drum that is usually only played during Sufi religious rituals.

Many of the songs Kholov plays are inspired by Rumi, a 13th-century Sufi mystic poet from Persia. The poetry of Rumi, who is claimed as a national poet in Tajikistan as well as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, bridged the gap between the spirituality of Sufi Islam and the imperfection of the real world.

"In Central Asia, music and dance have played a vital role in the social life of the people to preserve their rich heritage and literature," writes Jami on her web site.

"Dawlatmand Kholov is a symbolic figure representing an integral part of a culture and a unique form of music, falak. He uses this form to convey the poetic and Sufi principles embedded in their daily life," writes Jami.

The first performer in the festival will be Salamat Sadykova, once a popular Soviet artist and today an ambassador of Kyrgyz music around the world. Sadykova learned to play the komuz, a traditional Central Asian instrument similar to a lute, at a young age.

Raised by her grandmother, a singer of the traditional koshok, or funeral dirge, Sadykova began singing early and had great success at making traditional Kyrgyz music accessible. Also playing at Rozamira will be the band 4:33, who will play alongside the group Namgar fusing the sounds of Mongolia and southern Siberian nomads with modern electronica.

Monday, November 17, 2008

By Paul Goble, "Moscow and Grozny Each Seek to Exploit Sufism Abroad for Their Own Ends" - Georgian Daily - New York, NY, USA

Vienna: In the last decades of the Soviet period, Western analysts like Alexander Bennigsen and Enders Wimbush called attention not only to the many ways in which Sufism not only helped to keep Islam alive under communism but also to how it this mystical trend in Islam contributed the rise of national movements in the Muslim parts of the USSR.

But now, in a remarkable turnabout, Moscow and Grozny each appear to view at least one strand of Sufism -- that of Kunta-Haji, the founder of the Qadyria order in Chechnya 150 years ago -- as a possible means of expanding their standing with and influence on Islamic intellectuals beyond their respective borders in the Arab world and Africa.

At one level, the interests of Moscow and Grozny do in fact coincide: Both could benefit from being seen as supporters of this intriguing school of Muslim thought. But at another, deeper one, they clearly diverge, with Moscow wanting to penetrate that world while Grozny hopes to develop a resource that could give it greater flexibility vis-à-vis Moscow.

In recent months, there has been a spate of articles about Kunta-Haji, a thinker widely known in the Muslim world but little known beyond it. (For two intriguing recent examples, visit here and in particular Shamil Shikhaliyev’s analysis that was posted online last week).

But the role that Moscow and Grozny hope Kunta-Haji’s legacy will given them was highlighted more clearly by the decision earlier this year of the Russian and Chechen governments to name the new Russian Islamic University after the 19th century Sufi and by a comment on Friday by the chief mufti of Chechnya.

Sultan Mirzayev, head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of the Chechen Republic, told Islamrf.ru that the teachings of Kunta-Haji currently have “approximately two million followers” in Libya, Senegal, Mauritania and other African countries as well as in Europe. The Chechen mufti said that while in Libya, where he was received by Muammar Qadaffi, he met with leaders of the Islamic Appeal, an international body within the Muslim world, and discovered that the ideas of Kunta-Haji had penetrated Senegal and Chad already in the nineteenth century.

And Islamrf.ru added that some Chechen scholars believe that Kunta-Haji may have travelled to Africa between 1858 when he left his homeland because of differences with Sheikh Shamil and 1861 when he is known to have returned. But most specialists think that Kunta-Haji’s ideas spread there via Chechen Muslims performing the haj to Mecca.

But in order to understand why both Moscow and Grozny think they may be able to exploit Kunta-haji, it is important to know rather more about his life, his thought and perhaps especially the amazingly contradictory ways in which his thought has been applied by others not only in Chechnya but elsewhere as well.

Born in the Chechen village of Melcha-Hi sometime around 1830, Kunta made the pilgrimage to Mecca at 18 and acquired the honorific haji by which he is known. After returning to his homeland, he condemned the war Imam Shamil was waging against Russian forces, arguing that “spiritual independence” was more important than fighting an external enemy.

Not surprisingly, Shamil was furious at what Kunta-Haji was preaching, especially when the latter attracted a large number of followers by his mysticism, reflected in ecstatic dances, and is essentially pacifist views in the midst of the war. Even worse from Shamil’s point of view, Kunta-Haji said Turkey would not help Shamil’s forces, an accurate but unpleasant conclusion.

And more intriguing still for the way in which his thought has echoed since that time, Kunta-Haji sought to bridge the gap between the traditional norms of the region (adab) and shariat law and drew on ideas from other religions including Christianity, Judaism, and even Buddhism.
Because of his differences with Shamil, however, Kunta-Haji in 1858 left for another pilgrimage. But when he returned three years later, he attracted to his Qadiria order some 6,000 adepts, making him one of the most influential figures in the region, particularly after Shamil himself was taken prisoner by the Russians.

Kunta-Haji’s growing influence and his unorthodox views led more orthodox Islamic mullahs to denounce him to the Russian authorities, and in January 1864, he was arrested, imprisoned, and ultimately exiled to a small town in Novgorod Gubernia. There, three years later, on May 19, 1867, he died alone.

After his death, the followers of Kunta-Haji refused to elect a new sheikh or master, preferring to organize themselves in a council until his return. And because of that, it happened that at the time of the 1917 revolution and again after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, his followers became some of the most militant anti-Russian forces of all.

Indeed, according to many students of Chechnya, Kunta-Haji’s Qadiria order played a key role in the coming to power of Jokhar Dudayev in 1991 and continue to serve as the state religion of Chechnya, with its adepts sometimes stressing Kunta-Haji’s opposition to violence and at others his support for the right of his followers to organize themselves.

Given the dual nature of Kunta-Haji’s teachings, it is obvious why both Moscow and Grozny are interested in making use of him. For Moscow, his pacifistic views play to the Russian government’s professed opposition to terrorism and allow Moscow to reach out to one of a strain in Islamic thought that maintains links to Christians, Jews and Hindus.

But for Grozny, the game is more complex. On the one hand, the Chechen authorities are clearly interested in promoting a version of Islam Moscow is comfortable with, at least in the short term. But on the other, they are certainly aware that the spread of Kunta-Haji’s teachings in the Middle East and Africa gives them a new resource.

At the very least, it means that Chechnya will occupy a more prominent role in Moscow’s policies toward the Muslim world, a role few in the Russian capital will want to dispense with. But more than that, it gives Chechnya leverage against Moscow by generating for Grozny a new source of support abroad, support that could in time be turned against Russia.

New Delhi: With a Fatwa against terrorism issued by Islamic clerics recently, Delhi Police, along with the clerics, is doing its bit for ensuring no more terror attacks take place in the city.

According to a senior police official, plans are being drawn up to impart education about Islam to young Muslims with the help of clerics from neutral Muslim organisations. This will address those who are vulnerable to get manipulated into terror in the name of religion.

"Except Atif Bashir, who was killed in the Jamia Nagar encounter, all the Indian Mujahideen men arrested in connection with the Delhi blasts are products of public schools and not madarsas. They haven't been subjected to communal discrimination. However, on questioning them we realised they have no knowledge of the Quran. Hence, they were manipulated by Atif. He told them things like Jehad means a war against non-muslims and anyone who fights for Jehad becomes a hero,'' said the official.

He added that most of those arrested were from the Bareilwi sect which is more inclined towards Sufism and is largely not fundamental at all.

Reportedly, the terrorists were given "study material'' to read from, which included a book called `Jungle Pukarte Hain'. "It's a collection of short stories about Afghani militants who fought against the army. There are stories to make them believe Allah helps those who fight against non-muslims,'' said the cop. He added that more such books were being identified to stop their publication.

Clerics across the city agreed to the proposal of religious education to the youth. "Terrorism is neither Hindu nor Muslim, it is against humanity. Although it is not the police's job to start imparting education, we agree that to make a good citizen, moral and religious education is of prime importance. People don't turn to terror because they study in a madarsa or because they are Hindu or Muslim. They take to arms because of the money-oriented education given to them without imparting moral values,'' said Maulana Mahmood Madani from Jamait Ulema-e-Hind.

He added he was a part of the Fatwa issued against terror in Hyderabad on November 8 and these things were discussed there too. "Imbibing good Indian values, in addition to basic education, in youngsters from an early age will benefit. This is a long-term strategy which has to be taken up immediately. Unless we take a holistic approach to terrorism, we will suffer for years to come. If we start this now, the results will show 20 years from now,'' he said.

Another cleric said, "Islam is the religion of mercy for all humanity. It has given so much importance to human beings that it regards a single person's killing as the killing of humanity. It condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism. Unless the present and future generations understand this ideology of Islam, there will be danger to humanity''.

Accra (Ghana) - The ring Osman Mustapha wears on his right index finger was too tarnished to reflect the harsh African sun that pushed his eyes into slits and drew beads of sweat from his brow. That small piece of silver, though only a trinket, was a matter of both pride and principle to Mustapha as he studied it from the schoolyard.

“It is for protection from anything that might happen to me – you know, illnesses, car accidents, things like that,” said Mustapha, a teacher and former student of the Islamic Training Institute here. “Some people would tell you that this is all wrong. It isn’t wrong. It’s our culture.”

Such talismans are not unusual in Ghana, where roughly 12% of the population still identifies itself with traditional African religions. But on the finger of a Muslim, Mustapha’s ring is a prime example of what Wahabia, or more puritan Muslims, might call a corruption of Koranic law, and an example of how Ghanaian culture can stand at odds with Islam.

“That’s tantamount to polytheism,” said Yacomb Abban, general secretary of Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at, a large Muslim sect here, of such charms. “If you wear a charm, you are saying that it can protect you. If you think God cannot protect you, then you don’t know who God is.”

For decades, the Wahabia in Ghana, represented by Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at since 1997, have cultivated a complex infrastructure of international scholarships to send high-performing Muslim students to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, where, as Abban put it, they can receive an education in proper Islam.

Since the need for higher education in Ghana greatly exceeds its availability, students who can afford it often travel abroad for education. But these scholarships are believed by some to have implicit strings attached.

“All Ahlus Sunna, they come from Saudi Arabia. They are the Wahabia. You go and come back to tell people that some of our African culture is bad. They tell you that in Saudi Arabia,” Mustapha said.

Scholarships arranged through Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at are generally given by universities in the Middle East, and can cover tuition, living expenses and an annual plane ticket home for up to 10 years. Upon returning to Ghana, these graduates often take up positions of prominence within the Muslim community, and are relied upon as teachers.

“It is one of our principles to educate Muslims on how their religion must be practiced. When you have a culture that is against the teachings of the Koran, you must take out that culture,” Abban said.

Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at publicly condemns traditional Ghanaian funeral celebrations, which can be elaborate and lengthy affairs, as well as the use of traditional charms and amulets, certain tribal healing methods, veneration of sheiks and celebrations of the prophet Mohammed’s birthday.

While Abban did not condemn all elements of African culture, he said that true Islam simply does not allow for certain aspects of it. He “believes that Islam should be practiced according to the tradition of the prophet. No additions, no abstractions, no interpretations.

Lacking reputable Islamic universities in Ghana, Abban will continue to encourage as many students to study abroad as scholarships from foreign benefactors allow.

Prof. Nathan Samwini of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology pointed to the oil boom as one of the primary reasons for fund availability. “How much is a scholarship for one, or even 10 students, to an oil-rich country, if it means spreading your religious beliefs? I still have yet to figure out exactly where the scholarship money comes from, and no one has been able to properly explain it to me,” Samwini said.

Even leaders of Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at cannot pinpoint the exact source of the money. They are simply notified of how many scholarships have been awarded to Ghana, and are then left to distribute them. Abban suspects these might come from the universities, as part of a budget for helping underdeveloped countries.

Since Ghana received its independence from Great Britain in 1957, it has seen steadily increasing support from the Middle East, beginning with the opening of the Egyptian and Saudi Arabia embassies in Accra in the 1960s. The involvement of various Middle Eastern countries in Africa, however, is not solely confined to education.

“Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait are all invested in helping the poor,” said Sheik Mustapha Yaajalal, the proprietor and founder of the Islamic Training Institute.

His school has flooded and collapsed five times since its construction in 1984, and each time Yaajalal received both financial and volunteer aid from Iran to help him to reopen it. The mosque behind the school where he leads prayer every Friday was a gift from Kuwait.

While grateful for the foreign aid, Yaajalal said that his theology would be harshly criticized in the places from which he received so much help. “Sufis must live in secret when they go somewhere like Saudi Arabia,” said Yaajalal, a Sufi himself, and a firm believer in many of the practices that are condemned by Wahabia.

The 1980s and 1990s saw a great deal of tension between Ahlus Sunna Wa’al Jama’at and Tijaniyya Muslims, the other sizeable Islamic sect in Ghana, and Samwini said that the heavy influence of students returning from the Arabian Peninsula probably ignited the violence.

“Those who integrated back into society did not get along. Thankfully they have mellowed and the violence has subsided, but the sects still do not get along,” he said.

Over the last decade, Ghana has seen very little religious violence, and Samwini said that Muslims here have developed the ability to co-exist — so it would be difficult for extremist factions from the Middle East to transplant themselves here.

“This is not a country where hot-headed Muslims can survive. The tolerance level here is unparalleled in all of West Africa,” he said.

That peaceful co-existence that has prevented major violence in Ghana since the mid-1990s is also what he hopes will prevent organizations like Al-Qaeda from establishing a presence in Ghana. Yet tension remains between different sects that wish to see African Islam chart a particular course. Osman Mustapha is a prime example.

“I believe everything from the Koran. But there are some things they will not show a man in Saudi Arabia. They do not know the secrets of the Koran. You will find those in Africa,” he said.

Samantha Bryson is a Student of Journalism at Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and can be contacted at nyu.livewire@gmail.com

By Dalal Moosa, "A World of Faith" - NYU Live Wire - New York, NY, USA
Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A young religious activist and his ambitious plan for global harmony

Frank Fredericks was on a long, wandering trip through the Mediterranean, visiting friends and learning Arabic, when he heard a news report that would change his life.

It was a humid summer morning in coastal Larnaca, Cyprus, where he’d just woken up after a working a long night shift at a restaurant. On the news, he heard that Israel had just bombed Beirut’s International Airport. Lebanese Hezbollah fighters were firing guns and rockets. Soon, thousands of Lebanese-Americans, fleeing by boat, would land in Cyprus.

Fredericks, a recent college graduate who had been working on a paper about Christian-Muslim relations, decided to help. He called the American Embassy, and was dispatched to an evacuation camp in Nicosia, the Cypriot capital. There he handed out food supplies, helped at a medical clinic and listened to arriving evacuees tell their angry stories about Israel’s bombing of towns in Lebanon.

“Lebanon was a madhouse,” Fredericks recalled. But through the chaos, something came into focus.

“You find these people in the evacuation camps—a thousand people in one room, rich and poor, Sunni and Shiite, Christian and Muslim, kids and old people—they were all together, equal, no divisions.”

Fredericks, who went to a Christian high school, decided on the spot to begin a group to promote interfaith harmony. In the fall of 2006, he founded the organization World Faith. Its mission: “To reveal the humanity of the other.”

Today Fredericks, a native of Portland, Oregon, runs this small but flourishing not-for-profit from his New York City apartment. World Faith dispatches local students to soup kitchens and food pantries, and to coordinate international volunteer exchanges.

“We have three goals,” Fredericks explained. “One is action itself and community service. Two is interfaith dialogue, and three is utilizing the media to counter religious extremism and prove that we can use our religious traditions for peace-building efforts rather than division, war and hate.”

World Faith recently hosted its first international exchange program, the Lebanon Project. With $12,000 the group raised, Fredericks accompanied three Jewish students, two Christian students and three Muslim students on a trip to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon’s Beqa’a Valley. They visited schools, and worked with Palestinian children to create art and plant trees.

Josh Martin, a British Jew, helped found the project. He’d spent the previous winter helping Israelis left bereft by the 2006 conflict.

“While there, I wondered about Lebanon, specifically the hundreds of thousands of refugees and others whose lives were directly altered because of the violence,” he said. “No one appeared to be doing anything to help out.”

An attempt to found a chapter in Lebanon fizzled, but since then fledgling chapters have formed in Cairo and Sudan, with plans for a presence in several other U.S. and international cities.

Next World Faith is planning an international exchange in India, to encourage Americans to volunteer at orphanages and clinics, and to work with Hindu and Muslim young people in regions of religious conflict, around New Delhi and Ahmadabad. The group will also make a documentary. The project is the brainchild of Chicago interfaith activist Soofia Ahmed.

“The youth are really rising up,” said Ahmed, 22. “They’re really seeing how big of an issue religious pluralism is, how faith is being used for destructive means, but how it can also be used for productive ones.”

Dalal Moosa is a Student of Journalism at Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and can be contacted at dalal.moosa@nyu.edu

[Pictures: 1) Palestinian boys paint their version of peace at a Chtoura, Lebanon, primary school, as part of a World Faith project in Lebanon. 2) Palestinian girls in Lebanon show off their paintings of peace. Photos: Courtesy of Frank Fredericks].

Ankara: Thousands of people from a liberal Muslim sect, the Alevis, took to the streets here on Sunday, denouncing the Islamist-rooted government and calling for equal religious rights.

About 50,000 people, arriving from all parts of the country, gathered in downtown Ankara, chanting slogans against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and dancing traditional Alevi dances.

Protestors carried Turkish flags and portraits of Turkey's secularist founder Ataturk and placards with slogans such as: "End discrimination" and "Turkey is secular, it will remain secular."

"The AK Party ignores the rights of 20 million Alevis in this country. This shows that they are not honest with their talk of religious freedoms," said Suleyman Erseven, a 48-year old demonstrator.

The main Alevi demands include an end to Sunni dominance in the religious affairs directorate, the government agency regulating Muslim affairs; the abolition of compulsory religion classes in schools; and the recognition of Alevi temples as places of worship.

Turkey's sizeable Alevi sect is a distant relative of Shiite Islam, known for its traditionally leftist and secularist leanings. It has long been suppressed by the Sunni majority.

The Alevi faith, closely related to Sufism and Anatolian folk culture, is the specifically Turkish version of Alawism, prominent also in Syria.

They say that despite its advocacy of broader religious freedoms, the AKP government has done little on promises for reconciliation with the Alevis, who account for 15 to 20 million of Turkey's 70-million population.

Many Alevis tend to support secularist parties because they fear Islamists will put further restrictions on their faith. They say the AK Party strives to expand freedoms for Sunni Muslims, while ignoring the demands of Alevis.

Some protesters called for abolishing the Religious Affairs Directorate, which they say is defending Sunni Islam. The directorate tightly regulates Turkey's thousands of mosques, appoints imams, pays their salaries and approve sermons for Friday prayers.

Alevi representatives also said the government should stop building mosques in Alevi villages. Most Alevis do not attend mosques but prefer gathering in houses of prayer, called Cemevi, where women and men pray together.

The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, has also urged Ankara to expand Alevi rights.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Karachi: The courtyard of a local hotel located on the edge of the Arabian Sea was a sight to behold, with men and women attired in traditional Thari dresses dancing to the rhythm of Thari or desert music.

The occasion was the fourth annual Manghaar festival, organised by the Folklore Society of Pakistan, in collaboration with the European Union.

The festival aims to highlight the neglected folk music of Pakistan and the aim was duly fulfilled, with more than a dozen folk singers and Manganhaars from Sindh and Punjab, including dholak player Muhammad Yaqoob from Rahim Yar Khan, banjo player Ghulam Hussain, harmonium player Ghulam Sabbir and other folk singers from Umerkot, Chhachro, Hyderabad and Rahim Yar Khan, churning out entrancing beats till after midnight.

The literal meaning of the word Manganhaar is a ‘beggar’ but it also refers to a cohesive ethnic community that has a rich heritage of traditional folk music and resides on both sides of the Indo-Pak border.

While in India, the community concentrates in Jaisalmer, Barmer and Jalore, this side of the border, most of the Manganhaars live in the Thar desert, located in northern Sindh and the south of Punjab.

“The colours and essence of Sufism and traditional Thari music are in the air tonight,” said Kirshan Lal Bheel of Rahim Yar Khan, Punjab, “Manganhaars are above religions and have devoted their lives to the survival of folk music.” Bheel further reveals that, while their patrons were the Rajput Hindus, many of them have converted to Islam.

The Manganhaars, whose inspirations include the Sufi poetry of Mirabai, Bhagat Kabir, Surdas, Bulleh Shah, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Sachal Sarmast and Baba Farid, were an important part of their patron’s lives of their patrons, performing at all important occasions such as childbirth, marriage and death.

By Lakshmi Ajay, "‘Gujarat music mein dooba hua hai’" - The Times Of India - India
Saturday, November 8, 2008

Singer, performer, a lyricist and a music composer, seldom has an artist had such a wide trajectory of success as Kailash Kher

Having stormed the music scene with Allah Ke Bande he managed to capture the collective imagination of music lovers in the country with his famed sufiana style of singing.

Six years later the singer is donning more hats by the day and experimenting with what he knows best about, his music! We caught up with him during his recent trip to the city to perform for the Times Ahmedabad Festival 2008.

Seeming kicked about his first innings as a music producer with friends Naresh and Paresh Kamath in upcoming films like Dasvidanya and Chandni Chowk to China, he says, “I think after Shankar-Jaikishan, there’s a similar talent pool in us. Making music in both films have been interesting. The treatment of each film is so diverse that making music for them was like traversing a wide spectrum.”

Constantly involved in writing lyrics, making music, singing and performing, does the singer want to try his hand at acting as well? “Although I have done appearances in my songs I don’t think I am inclined towards acting. You have to be committed and give lots of time for the same.”

Having been a participant in Mission Ustaad, Kailash returns as a judge on Indian Idol 4 and seems visibly excited, “The contestants that we have chosen from different cities this time are immensely talented. There have been interesting format changes in the show.”

What about the famous face-offs and the war of words between the judges, almost a compulsory thing with most talent based reality shows? “I have come to know Sonali Bendre only during the show but have worked with Anu Malek and Javed saab before. So no chance of ego clashes there. Hum log bade maze se kaam karte hain !” he says.

Having garnered a huge fan following for his band Kailasa’s two albums Kailasa and the recent Kailasa jhoomo , he says, “We have gathered a motley mix of fan following where we have some fans who identify with classical music and some who like rock music.”

With a musical collaboration with DJ Paul Oakenfield in place, he is all set to take sufi music places. “The youth mostly connect with sufi style because these songs have lyrics that speak of values associated with our culture, yet the sound is contemporary. I have observed that there is an instant connect to Sufi music anywhere in the world,” says the singer who also pens his own lyrics.

Performing in Gujarat of course is a pleasure for this soft-spoken singer. “Gujarat music main dooba hua hai. And one thing is for sure that there is lots of khana and gana here that one can indulge in,” he grins.

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